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AOL Placed on Spam Blacklist
Hacker-X writes "According to this item over at Spam Kings,
AOL has had a large swath of its IP addresses added to the Mail Abuse Prevention Systems (MAPS) Real-time Blackhole List (RBL).
The RBL is used by many corporations and large ISPs to filter spam.
MAPS evidently started blocking the AOL mail servers less than 24 hours after filing a complaint with AOL's abuse desk. The block was initiated in response to spam emanating from AOL mail servers."
Overzealous RBL admins screw everyone. If they think everyone is going to sit back and not mind that major ISPs like AOL have been blacklisted, they are (hopefully) if for a rude awakening.
How does someone seriously justify this? Isn't this like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face?
Maybe it's time to come up with a hybrid system? How about a combinations of black and "gray" lists, where the gray lists are subjected to greater scrutiny or harsher limits by spam filtering software?
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I don't want to hear from anyone who uses AOL anyways.
No smoking sigs indoors.
I'm a big fan of MAPS, but one would think that over the years they've developed some very high-level contacts over at AOL and that they would call these guys up and talk it out before undertaking a major blacklisting.
Some BL lists have no published way to get off once on. There should be some consistency to at least getting removed. I speak from experience of having "inherited" an IP addr from my hosting provider that was formerly an open-relay. It took a lot of effort over 2 weeks to clean that mess up.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
AOL is definately a group that deserves a bit of their own treatment. I've found so many networks get blocked for insignificant things. I have a mailing list of just my members, and no one else. Because one person accidently hit "Abuse" (of the 40 AOL people on the list), we were blacklisted. Not just an IP, but a
It's not the first encounter I've had with AOL. Anyone who sends mail eventually finds themselves blacklisted with AOL. They're just a pain in the ass. Unfortunately, you can't just convince anyone using AOL's email to switch to someone else. If only it were so easy.
At one time, AOL blacklisted my home IP. It was a static IP, which I was the only user of. I don't know which genius did it, but someone who I was personally mailing (like, not even Bcc lists or newsletters) must have hit the abuse button.
I'm sure it helps them out. If they can knock out 25% of their mail load at any given time, it's 25% less mail they have to process. Who cares which 25%, eh?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
FTA:
"the RBL blacklist is used by some of the biggest ISPs in the world, including RoadRunner, USA.net, BT, Telstra -- and AOL itself"
I could send an email from my own account, to my own account, and it would be deleted as spam.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
MAPS stopped being a reputable service ever since they joined MFN/Abovenet. I say this as someone who previously supported MAPS and even donated to their legal defense fund.
It was quite sad to see them fall to the dark side. It's even sadder to see that MAPS is still in active use by anyone outside of MFN.
Now we need to find a way to black-hole all of the AOL CDs being spamed to my snail mail address!
I quit using MAPS years ago because it was no longer effective, especially for business use. Their solution to one spam from a customer of a large ISP is to block the whole ISP or, if you were lucky, just the whole contiguous IP space that one spam came from. Still, this meant something like a quarter of the Fourtune 500 had mail servers being blocked, which is unacceptable for a business-to-business email server. Worse, it rarely blocked much spam.
In fact, I just searched the MAPS RBL for the last ten spams rejected by my mail server and only two of the hosts were listed in the MAPS RBL.
AOL is listed on SpamCop too. http://www.spamcop.net/w3m?action=checkblock&ip=20 5.188.157.37
I've got e-commerce clients that, unable to communicate gracefully with AOL users, would run into trouble with a third or more of their customers. This is not trivial, it's blacklist BS
Is MAPS forcing you to use their lists? No. So what's your problem?
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
AOL profits from these spammers and they know it.
.. hell, ask the kooks, they'll tell you AOL has a fraction of the spam problem anyone else does, and their main complaint is only bounce spam, which they've nearly eliminated this year. Carl has since moved on (got promoted I think) and left two more in his stead who hopefully will continue to be as effective as him.
Bullshit. MCI profits from spammers. You're talking out of your ass. You think they care about the monthly dialup access fees from spammers? AOL until recently had Carl Hutzler, one of the most respected names in anti-spam, who has turned AOL around and made them one of the leaders in anti-spam, from outbound port 25 blocking to SPF. Ask anyone on NANAE
MAPS is run by some righteous little twits driving their fiefdom of an RBL into irrelevance at flank speed. Most responsible admins have moved on to some subset of SORBS, Blitzed OPM, and the Spamhaus XBL, with perhaps SPEWS turned on for advisory data only.
You on the other hand just think you're hot shit because you don't like AOL.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
Actually, this surprises me as an exception rather than the rule as far as AOL is concerned.
(I posted the following in an earlier discussion on a different topic, but it is 100 percent applicable here.)
I am not an AOL customer, have never been, never will be (at least, not by choice), but I am glad AOL is there to serve the unwashed masses. Because a huge portion of their customer base is, shall we say, "uninformed," AOL has taken a number of measures to protect them (and their network) from malicious traffic. Based on anecdotal observation, it seems to be working.
Because hundreds of people have my "public" email address in their address books, I recive dozens (sometimes hundreds) of virues per week whenever there is an outbreak. However, I cannot recall the last time I received one from an AOL user.
I receive hundreds of (filtered) spam messages daily, but again, cannot recall receiving any from an AOL machine. (This based on source IP address, not the forged FROM line.)
On the flip side, 30-40 percent of spam comes from zombied Comcast and RoadRunner accounts (most from Comcast). The rest come from non-North American IP addresses.
Like I said, limited anecdotal observation, but it appears to me AOL is doing something right, and is the perfect ISP for the "uninformed" user.
Considering the size of their customer base, imagine how much more junk/malicious 'net traffic there would be without AOL.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
It is people like me who use the RBL's and have my email server setup to reject (with proper attribution) email from sites on the RBL's.The person sending you the message will get their message kicked back to them with a very clear "We rejected your message because your domain/IP address is on a blacklist at www.xxx.xxx".
How much easier does it get then that?Simple. I read the logs and the discussions. I've only had one problem since I put in the blacklists. And that was from a company with BellSouth who had had other problems with blacklists because BellSouth didn't handle the IP addresses correctly.
Now, balance that against the thousands of rejected spams EVERY SINGLE DAY and the course is clear.
With less than