Re: AOL Issue

Chris Wright wrote:

> A good few months back I started getting failure messages back from
> AOL when I used accounts that I forward SPAM from to SPAMCOP.

I'm not clear on what you are saying yet, but at first glance it might
sound like you were doing something wrong, like reporting your own
provider.

You didn't define the scenario with sufficient detail and clarity that I
am getting the picture yet.

> Something along the lines of "AOL is not able to process your email
> because it comes from a domain that reports SPAM".

So far that story doesn't make any sense to me yet and I know of no such
AOL error message.  I'm going to put an example of an AOL mailbounce
message below^3, obtained from the AOL postmaster faq information page
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/selfhelp/index.html

You are saying you have multiple mail accounts.  You are saying some of
those accounts are used to forward spam [not SPAM, see below^1] to
spamcop for purposes of reporting

The way spam reporting is supposed to work is that the reporter submits
a spam to the parser, I recommend the webparser when you are learning
and fine tuning your spam reporting.  I also recommend that you
understand the structure of mail headers.

Altho' maybe an 'ordinary' mail recipient might have less need to
understand headers, someone who is taking the role of being a spam
reporter, which function causes IP addresses to become blocklisted,
needs to have a better understanding -- because they have a higher level
of responsibility for their actions.

If someone is spam reporting with spamcop, and that reporting activity
is causing their own provider's IP address to become spamcop
blocklisted, then that listing of their own provider is going to have
trouble with its mail failing.  Problems with sending mail from listed
servers can occur with any provider, AOL or otherwise.

> Was this ever discussed on SPAMCOP?

I haven't heard of any such thing and it also doesn't make any sense.

> I contacted the AOL users via GMAIL and forwarded
> them a copy of the returned mail headers.

A copy of the returned mail headers?  You are saying you gmailed your
failed recipient a copy of /what/ headers?  The headers of the AOL mail
to you?  The headers of the mail which was rejected?  Both?  Showing
that 'whole enchilada' [but not here, see below^2]

> ps. Hope this is the right group for this discussion.

It sounds like a great topic for discussion here, but you are going to
have to get a lot more 'windy' and descriptive of the situation and
provide some exact information or 'evidence' rather than a description
of something before I understand.


^1 SPAM is the Hormel meat product, and anti-spammers and Hormel both
agree that spam is not SPAM and we won't use the terms interchangeably

^2 When an occasion arises in which 'ugly' mail needs to be displayed
somewhere, which ugly means such things as complete mailheaders and
bodies which might have attached complete mailheaders and bodies, it is
not acceptable to post such items into the discussion groups like this
spamcop.help or spamcop.  Originally the newsgroup spamcop.spam was
created for that purpose.  Nowadays we do it differently and feed the
entire mail with its contiguous headers and attachments into the
webparser, copy the parser's tracking url, and paste the url into the
discussion group such as this.   The tracking url looks like
http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z893785525z78007b39eb7150585dfb33e7dd17d2fbz

^3 If you are having problems sending email to America Online please
choose the appropriate link below so we can further help you.-- I have
the bounce error message I received in email- select one below --  I
have the AOL specific error message (example RLY:B1) -- <then follows a
specific example, on another different AOL postmaster page are about 60
other examples^4 in 12 different classes>

^4 http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/index.html Error Messages  RTR
Blocks | HVU Blocks | DNS Blocks | RLY Blocks | ISP Blocks | HTM Blocks
| FSV Blocks | IPT Blocks | GEN Blocks | SDI Blocks | DYN Blocks | CON
Blocks


-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin