Hello all -

A system issue caused us to improperly refuse or tempfail messages from some IPs from about 1pm until 3pm ET today, but the issue has been resolved. Please contact the Postmaster at postmaster.aol.com if you continue to have issues beyond this time.

Thank you.

Hello -

Based on customer feedback we've recently made a change to how we handle some types of mail identified as spam. As a result of this change will be issuing more CON:B1 Refuses to mailers sending this type of spam. It is possible that legitimate senders might be negatively impacted by these changes. If you encounter an issue, please direct your inquiries to the postmaster site (listed below) and open a ticket.

Thanks.
Lili

http://postmaster.aol.com

Hi everyone -

We have added some new machines to our outbound mail complex. Please reference the postmaster site for the detailed information. The link is provided below.


http://postmaster.aol.com/Postmaster.OMRs.php


Thanks!

Lili
AOL Postmaster Team

Hello Everyone -

We are going to be relaunching the Postmaster blog, so please stay tuned for new messages, posts and information!

Thanks for your patience!

Lili
AOL Postmaster Team

Hi all --

We had an internal issue which affected Internet inbound senders today, September 12, 2011. The problem lasted from roughly 10AM (eastern time) until ~3:15PM Eastern time

If you opened a ticket on our Postmasters site because you were having problems sending your Internet mail to AOL members, please retry your mail at this time.

**Note** This did not affect AOL member email out to the Internet, or to other AOL members.

Thank you!

We have added a few new machines to our outbound mail complex.

ims-d41.mx.aol.com (205.188.249.148)

ims-d42.mx.aol.com (205.188.249.149)

ims-d43.mx.aol.com (205.188.249.150)

ims-d44.mx.aol.com (205.188.249.151)

ims-m41.mx.aol.com (64.12.207.144)

ims-m42.mx.aol.com (64.12.207.145)

ims-m43.mx.aol.com (64.12.207.146)

ims-m44.mx.aol.com (64.12.207.147)

These servers will be handling aberrant mail. So if you would add them to your configurations with appropriate weight, we would be grateful.

Thank you!

Margot.

If you are seeing a DNS:NR error when you attempt to connect to AOL's mx record, we are refusing your connection because the server you are using to send email has no reverse-DNS, or pointer record associated with the IP.

We have been refusing emails from servers with no reverse DNS for years, so this is nothing new. However, the mechanism we were using until recently still allowed a trickle from those servers through.

We recently fixed the glitch, so you may find your emails are now entirely refused, rather than trickling through at a very slow rate.

For those senders who have opened tickets with our Postmaster team and have updated their pointer records accordingly (and who now have reverse-DNS), based on how our lists are aggregated/pushed into production, you may see a 24 - 36 hour delay between when your DNS configurations are updated, and when you are successfully sending emails again to our system.

- Margot.

Every year there seems to be a topic or a phrase that seems to take over the anti-spam industry. This year, that topic is reputation. What is IP reputation? How do ISPs calculate it, and what do they do with it?

Well, I can't begin to answer that question for every ISP out there, but I can give you some idea how AOL calculates IP reputation and what we do with it. This information is also available on a new page on our website called "IP Reputation, the Whitelist, and Inbox Delivery at AOL".

If you are new to the idea of IP reputation, I hope this answers some of your questions.

What is IP reputation?

Each IP that delivers mail to AOL has a reputation -- roughly good, bad, or somewhere in between. Your reputation is a holistic view of your IP and takes into account a wide variety of factors including -- but not limited to -- spam complaints, not spam reports, spam folder deliveries, and invalid recipients. For more general information on reputation, many articles have been written on the subject and are easily found on the web.

How does IP reputation impact inbox delivery?

In short, IPs with a good reputation will benefit from better inbox delivery than IPs with a bad reputation. Moreover, IPs with a bad reputation will be subject to more temp deferrals, temp blocks, and permanent IP blocks.

How can I improve my IP's reputation?

The trick to a good IP reputation is to send mail to people who want it. AOL has put together a list of best practices to help senders ensure they are doing just this. Please read our sender best practices document for tips on improving your IP's reputation. If you are experiencing delivery issues -- and your IP does not send any bulk, marketing, or advertising mail -- please fill out a support request and let us know what kind of mail you send.

What is the AOL Whitelist?

The standard AOL whitelist offers protection from certain spam filters. Being on the whitelist is in no way a guarantee of inbox delivery, and IPs on the whitelist can still be spam foldered, temp deferred, temp blocked, or permanently blocked if they have a bad reputation. IPs are not automatically added to the whitelist, but must apply on the AOL Postmaster website. For more information about the standard whitelist or to fill out an application, read our whitelist information page.

How does whitelisting impact inbox delivery? How do I know if I am on the whitelist?

If your mail is being temp deferred, temp blocked, or your IP has been permanently blocked, you may not be on the whitelist. We do not currently have a way for you to query your IPs whitelist status, but if you have reason to believe you are no longer whitelisted, fill out a new whitelist request.

My whitelist request was denied. What do I do?

If you send bulk, marketing, or advertising mail, first be sure you meet all of our bulk sender conditions. If you do meet the bulk sender conditions, the next step is to work on improving your IP's reputation by following our sender best practices.

*** Finally, if you do not send any bulk, marketing, or advertising mail, please visit our support tools and let us know what you do send. ***

Christine
Manager, Postmaster Team

For a while now, we have been using the Spamhaus Policy Block List (PBL) for some of our spam-fighting needs. Our preferred method for you to identify your dynamic IP space is via the PBL. Please submit and update your dynamic IPs with Spamhaus as needed. Blocking mail that comes from dynamic IPs can be a very effective spam-fighting technique, but only if we all participate!

To manage your dynamic IPs with regards to the PBL, please visit Spamhaus' website. They provide this particular service free of charge.

(And, no, Spamhaus is not paying us to advertise, but perhaps we should charge them. :))

David
Systems Programmer, AOL Postmaster Team

Update 9/9/08: The information in this post regarding redaction has been corrected. To see what changed, click here.

In the wake of our announcement that we will be converting all feedback loops to ARF, we have received some comments from senders who do not have the resources to implement scripting to read and process ARF complaints. The typical sender in such a situation is one that gets only a handful of complaints a day and handles them manually from their own inbox.

ARF can be read in most major email clients with a little human intervention. The content of the header will be the same as the original format, in that the same redactions will be present. Any email address found in an x-header will be redacted. In the event that the recipient information is in the body of the email such as in a footer that says, for example, "recipient@aol.com is subscribed to this mailing list", we will not redact that, and it will be contained in its original format in the human-readable attachment.

To read the header of the original message, you need to view the source of the ARF message. I have included some of the major mail reading clients below; if anyone has additional ones, please leave them in the comments!

* Microsoft Entourage 2008 for Mac: Message -> Source
* Microsoft Entourage 2004 for Mac: View -> Source
* Microsoft Outlook 2007: Right click on the email in the email pane -> Options -> Internet Headers
* Mozilla Thunderbird: View -> Source Code OR View -> Headers -> All

If you need help reading ARF complaints, one of the key developers of ARF, Word to the Wise, has written a UNIX ARF parser called ARFFilter. ARFFilter allows the recipient to rewrite the report and to put some of the ARF metadata in the subject line, making it easier to use with a standard MUA. It integrates well with procmail. It can be found here.

If you are aware of any other parsing solutions, feel free to post them in the comments. Also, vendors who provide feedback loop support and can help senders with the ARF conversion are welcome to advertise their solutions in the comments.

Please note that AOL has not tested these solutions and does not endorse any particular vendor or product.

Annalivia Ford
Senior Technical Account Manager, Postmaster Team

The AOL Postmaster Team spends a lot of time helping email senders resolve delivery issues. Our goal is to educate senders on what practices lead to a good reputation and what practices generally lead to a poor reputation. To further this effort, we made a couple of changes to our postmaster website.

First, we added a new document called "Sender Best Practices." This document outlines the basic guidelines for improving your sender reputation. These are not requirements. They are best practices. Following one or more of these best practices does not guarantee email delivery or whitelisted status, but the more best practices you follow, the better your sender reputation should be – and the better your sender reputation, the better your delivery.

Second, we modified our old best practices document and renamed it "Requirements for Sending Email to AOL" which is more appropriate, as these are in fact requirements. Failure to meet any of these requirements will result in delivery issues.

We hope you find these new documents informative.

Christine
Manager, AOL Postmaster Team

Welcome to the AOL Postmaster Blog!

Just what the Internet needs, right? Another blog! But have no fear, we won't be writing about the latest American Idol rejects, moaning about our horrible NCAA brackets, or pontificating about the Presidential elections. Nope, we are here for one reason only - to keep you informed about what's going on with the AOL Anti-Spam Team and how it might affect you.

If you'd like to be notified each time we create a journal entry, or when someone leaves a comment, click on Alerts or Feeds to subscribe. Also, feel free to comment on our posts, but please, keep it clean. This is a family establishment.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that this is not the appropriate place to make requests of the AOL Postmaster team. General postmaster information about our whitelists, feedback loops, block codes, etc. can be found on our website. If your email to AOL is being blocked, please visit our postmaster site and be sure to have your error code handy for quick resolution.

Christine
Manager, AOL Postmaster Team