Fun new policy at AOL

Thu Aug 28 14:24:18 UTC 2003

> Sometime mid last week, one of my clients--a state chapter of
> a national
> association--became unable to send to all of their AOL
> members. Assuming
> it was simply that AOLs servers were inundated with infected emails, I
> gave it some time. The errors were simply "delay" and "not
> delivered in
> time specified" errors.

AOL appear to have recently changed their MX receiving policies, see the
following demon.announce post:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=xVIP4XA5f7M%24EwzW%40demon.net&oe=UTF-8
&output=gplain

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One such scheme uses a list of "end user" IP addresses on the basis that
such users will only be sending legitimate email via their own ISP's
"smarthost" email server. The idea is that the blocklist will be able to
block non-legitimate email because it arrives directly. In particular it
should block "spam" sent via insecure systems or virus/worm infections.

We have recently been in discussion with AOL who are, at a future
date, planning to implement just such a scheme as they have found,
working with many ISPs around the world, that it significantly impacts
their incoming spam volumes.
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Regards,

Jonathan