AOL has inked an agreement to host mail for MMC/mail.com domains. The roll-out will be in several phases. In September, AOL began MXing for mail.com domains. The list of domains can be found on www.mail.com. Right now, AOL is taking the messages on our inbound relays, then handing them off to Outblaze, where the mailboxes are currently hosted. This should not be misinterpreted as AOL spoofing or being an open relay.

New MMC mailboxes are being hosted at AOL. We are in the process of migrating existing MMC mailboxes to the AOL system. This process will continue for the next several weeks until complete.

What does this mean for you?

You will already be seeing SMTP errors from AOL if we do not accept delivery of a message on our relays. This will be the familiar RLY:B1, DYN:T1, HVU:B1, etc. errors. As mailboxes are created on AOL or migrated to AOL, they will be included in our complaint feedback loop process.

What do you need to do?

Nothing new. Delivery, whitelisting, feedback loops, etc. applies to all mail delivered to our complex, whether it is for aol.com mailboxes, my eAddress mailboxes, or any other domains for which we host mail. Any technical questions or delivery issues related to this change should follow our normal Postmaster support process. Mail.com remains an independently owned and operated business. Any business questions related to mail.com should be directed to mail.com.

Christine
Manager, Postmaster Team

Just a quick announcement to let you know that we are no longer sending report cards. If you have a complaint feedback loop, make sure you are monitoring your spam complaints and not relying on the report card to alert you to complaint issues. If you don't have a feedback loop, you can apply for one here: http://postmaster.aol.com/fbl/index.html

Reminder: Do not use the comment section of this blog to request postmaster support. Support requests must be submitted here: http://postmaster.aol.com/waters/index.html.

Christine
Manager, Postmaster Team

AOL is making a change which will affect the behavior of ALL bounce messages for both inbound and outbound mail.

Currently all bounce messages have the sender name of MAILER-DAEMON@aol.com.

With the changes for outbound mail, ALL bounce messages will have the sender name of MAILER-DAEMON@sender-domain. For example, an AIM account sending invalid recipients to the internet, will receive a bounce from MAILER-DAEMON@aim.com, and a switched.com member from MAILER-DAEMON@switched.com, UK member from MAILER-DAEMON@aol.co.uk.

With the changes for inbound mail, ALL bounce messages (mostly due to user-defined spam settings) will have the sender name of MAILER-DAEMON@recipient –domain. For example, a member of yahoo sending to an AIM account with a user-defined block, would receive a bounce message from MAILER-DAEMON@aim.com.

This may result in multiple bounce messages generated for a single piece of email being returned to the same sender. One bounce message is generated for each unique recipient domain.

For example, a member of yahoo sending a message with four recipients, two AIM accounts and two switched.com accounts (all with user-defined blocks), would receive ONE bounce message from MAILER-DAEMON@aim.com and ONE from MAILER-DAEMON@switched.com.

These changes will be installed into production over the next couple of weeks.

Christine
Manager, Postmaster Team

AOL Postmaster support is back online. Thanks again for your patience. We did not lose any requests as far as we know, so please wait patiently for responses.

-David

Postmaster support is currently offline as we work through a technical issue. Your requests will be processed (eg, you should receive an email that your request was received), but will not be actioned until the system comes back online. Please do not submit multiple requests on the same issue. We will post an entry on the blog when the system is back online.

Thank you for your patience.

-David

To protect our system, we will soon implement captcha on our postmaster tools, including the FBL and whitelist request forms. There are some senders who submit one request for each IP address used. Please do not do this any longer. When submitting whitelist or FBL requests on a range, please minimize the number of requests. Excessive requests may be denied.

Christine
Manager, Postmaster Team

AOL will be performing some maintenance on our postmaster support tools on Thursday, June 11, 2009 from 1-3PM. Please expect them to be non-functional during this time period. As a reminder, these tools are found at:
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/waters/index.html

Whitelist and FBL request functionality is expected to be unaffected.

Thank you for your patience.

-David

The FBL and WL request system is back online and should be working properly.

Have a good weekend!

-David

We are currently experiencing technical issues with our feedback loop system. You will be unable to submit WL and FBL requests while we resolve these issues. Thank you for your patience.

-David

Everything is back to normal now. All spam complaints are now generating feedback loops as configured.

We are doing some system maintenance which is resulting in the loss of 15% of outgoing feedback loops. We expect this to continue for the next few hours.

Christine

Postmaster support has been restored. Any requests that were submitted on our website have been processed, and you should have received an email confirmation.

We normally strive for a turnaround time of 24-48 hours, but requests are taking longer as we work through our backlog. It is not necessary to contact the call center to check the status of your ticket, or to submit duplicate tickets. We appreciate your patience.

Postmaster support is currently unavailable as we work through a technical issue. Thank you for your patience, and we will post when support is again available.

We are taking our ticketing system down to perform maintenance and upgrades to the back end during this coming weekend.

You will still be able to open Postmaster support tickets, but any tickets opened though our online system and any Postmaster tickets opened through the call center between Friday January 16th at 12 noon, and Tuesday January 20th at 12 noon Eastern time will not be actioned until the system is back up.

Tickets should resume processing by 12 noon on Tuesday January 20th, Eastern time. We regret any inconvenience this may cause, and will work to get the system back online as quickly as possible.

--
Annalivia Ford
Senior Technical Account Manager, AOL Postmaster Team

As we promised, we will be sending a different report card to domains generating an excess of 1.0% inbox complaints on a given day. Below is the text of the 1% report card.

Dear [domain name],

You are receiving this message via our automated "Report Card" process because our available data indicate that in the last 24 hours your domain's [insert domain here] mail stream has exceeded an inbox complaint rate of 1%.

If you are an ISP, please investigate any active bot infestations, zombied computers, compromised webforms, etc.
If you are a bulkmailer, please ensure that you have a feedback loop, and that that you are following AOL's best practices guidelines for bulk-mailers.
If you are a hosting company, please ensure that you have a feedback loop on your shared servers and general IP space, and are monitoring it and addressing any problems.

If you are experiencing delivery issues as a result of rising complaints, please first address the situation and then if delivery problems persist, seek AOL's assistance via our Support Request Tools.

For additional information please visit our Postmaster website, where one can find a more detailed explanation of how the Report Card system works, AOL's technical requirements for sending email to us, AOL's best practices guidelines for bulk-mailers, and more.

This is an automated notification. Replies to this email will not be seen.

Expect this change to occur in the next few days.

Christine
Manager, Postmaster Team