Are AOL's MXs mass rejecting anyone else's emails?

Mark Radabaugh mark at amplex.net
Tue Sep 7 23:43:59 UTC 2004


Christopher X. Candreva wrote:

>On Tue, 7 Sep 2004, Jon Lewis wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Any network that doesn't already have it, I highly recommend signing up
>>for AOL's feedback loop (aka scomp reports) at
>>http://postmaster.aol.com/tools/fbl.html.  This will give you a sort of
>>early warning system notifying you of spam issues on your network.
>>    
>>
>
>And you will also get random emails that your users have sent to AOL users, 
>who then click on "Report as spam" seemingly at random.
>
>I've received Spam reports on e-mail asking when someone's kids should be 
>picked up at school, giving directions for a job interview, CONGRATULATING 
>that same person on being accepted for the job, and in once case received 
>a 'spam complaint' on every mail my user sent as part of a conversation. 
>
>As in, the AOL user replied, then clicked "Report as spam". He received a 
>reply to his reply, replied, and Reported as Spam. This was not a "Stop 
>e-mailing me" conversation. It was a perfectly normal conversation between 
>two people.
>
>Then there are the people who have mail forwarded from here to their AOL 
>account, and can't get it through their thick skulls that "Report as spam" 
>isn't doing a damn thin in this case.
>
>Grrrr.
>
>So it's a nice idea -- but IMHO fails in practice.
>
>  
>
It's still pretty handy but I agree lots of AOL users seem to think the 
'report as spam' button must be the delete button or something.  When 
somebody on our network gets infected with a spam trojan the feedback 
loop is pretty helpful in detecting it quickly.

Mark Radabaugh
Amplex



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