aol rejects mailing lists?

Wed Jun 20 22:00:41 UTC 2001

On Wed, 20 Jun 2001, Christian Kuhtz wrote:
>
>
> Hey guys,
>
> I've noticed on one of the mailing lists that I'm running that
> AOL has just started bouncing email (like literally a few
> minutes ago) sent to subscribers of the list.  Email does get
> delivered properly when sent directly to the subscribers.  If
> the mail gets delivered thru the list, it's rejected with a
> 550 MAILBOX NOT FOUND which is bogus.

[long time lurker, first time poster -- I don't run a real
network :-)]

I'm getting something a little different (addresses changed to
protect the innocent):

   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<abcxyz at aol.com>
<qwerty at aol.com>

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to air-yh04.mail.aol.com.:
>>> RCPT To:<qwerty at aol.com>
<<< 550 MISSING OR INCORRECT DOMAIN IN RCPT COMMAND
550 <qwerty at aol.com>... User unknown
>>> RCPT To:<abcxyz at aol.com>
<<< 550 MISSING OR INCORRECT DOMAIN IN RCPT COMMAND
550 <abcxyz at aol.com>... User unknown

Both of these addresses are on an internal use list of about 30
addresses that last successfully delivered mail to these guys a
couple of hours ago.

When I first read it, I laughed out loud because I *do* tend to
think of AOL as an incorrect domain.  But this, coupled with
Christian's report, looks more like they've broken something than
done something deliberate.  Telneting to port 25 of
air-yh04.mail.aol.com times out at the moment...

--

Joseph F. Noonan
Systems Manager
Rigaku/MSC
jfn at msc.com
http://www.RigakuMSC.com/