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

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

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.

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

This is a heads up that we are going to be making a change next week to our Report Card process.

Previously, Report Cards were sent to any domain generating in excess of 0.1% inbox complaints. The Report Card itself listed the specific inbox complaint number.

The new Report Cards will be sent to domains generating in excess of 0.3% inbox complaints. While 0.1% is still the target for a bulk mailer, we do not feel it is necessary to alert mailers of a potential problem until they have reached 0.3%. In addition to this change, we will no longer be providing the specific inbox complaint percentage for each domain. The report card will simply be an indication that you have exceeded 0.3% and that you should check your processes to ensure you are managing your spam complaints.

We have also updated our Report Card information page on the Postmaster site and the text of the Report Card itself. The new text of the Report Card is as follows:


The next step we plan to take is to send a different report card to domains generating over 1.0% inbox complaints. So, if you have 0.3% - 1.0% you will get Report Card #1. If you have over 1% complaints, you will get Report Card #2. This change will likely be made in the coming weeks, and we will post the text for Report Card #2 at that time.

Christine
Manager, Postmaster Team

On July 8, 2008, David Zakar announced that AOL was launching beta online sender support tools. A big thanks to our pilot testers who helped us identify bugs and ensure that our tools are usable by everyone around the world*. I'm pleased to announce that we are removing the "beta" and launching our online support tools as the primary method of contacting the AOL Postmaster team. Moving forward, priority will be given to requests that come through our online tools.

There are currently four primary support pages. To receive the quickest and most accurate support, please fill in the entire form accurately.

FBL Modification/Deletion Request Tool: Any requests regarding FBLs should be made here.

RTR/RLY/DNS Block Removal Request Tool: This form is for mail administrators only. Telnet and nslookup results from the IPs in question are required to submit this form.

HVU Inquiry/Removal Tool: Anyone receiving an HVU error can submit a support request here. HVU blocks occur when you try to send email with a blocked URL to AOL users. This form will help you identify which URL is blocked and to request removal of the block.

Other information requests: We recognize that not all support requests will fit nicely into one of the buckets above, and this page is where you can tell us about any other issues you experience while sending mail to AOL users. We do not guarantee that you will receive a response to an inquiry placed using this form. If you are being blocked, please use the appropriate tool. Submitting an unblock request on the "Other" tool is the slowest way to resolve your issue.


If you have not already begun using our online support tools, please do so from here forward. Priority will be given to requests made through these tools, so bookmark these pages and take the call center number off your speed dial!

Christine
Manager, Postmaster Team



*The only known limitation of the tool right now is that it does not accept nslookup results in non-English languages. Please use an English-language version of nslookup, or translate the strings in your nslookup to English - use the troubleshooting guide's results to see what they should be. We hope to support more languages in the near future.

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

AOL first began offering complaint feedback loops in 2003. Since that time, many other ISPs have begun offering FBLs, and from that, a standard(ish) format was born. This format is called ARF, or Abuse Reporting Format, and is designed to prevent FBL recipients from having to maintain separate parsers for FBLs from different providers. Due to the widespread adoption of ARF, AOL is adopting ARF as its only format for sending FBLs.

Beginning on September 2, 2008, AOL will remove the option to create non-ARF FBLs. We will also convert all existing non-ARF loops to ARF loops.

Please note that ARF messages are not readable in most major email clients. Parsing and decoding the complaints will require scripting. If you have existing FBLs in the traditional non-ARF format, please update your tools and scripts to parse ARF complaints by this time.

To read more about how ARF is used at AOL, click here.

Christine
Manager, AOL Postmaster Team

We are doing some website maintenance, which is causing some of our forms to time out. If you experience this or other website issues, please be patient. The maintenance should be completed by COB today.

Just a quick announcement to let you know that we have updated the Feedback Loop documentation on the AOL Postmaster website. Some mailers informed us that the process was confusing, particularly with regard to the email confirmation and IP ownership.

In response, we've added two new links. The first, FBL Application Information, describes the application process in detail, explaining the various steps and why they are necessary. The second, Feedback Loop Technical Requirements, explains how you can satisfy the IP ownership requirement.

It is our hope that this updated documentation takes some of the confusion out of the FBL application process.

Christine
Manager, AOL Postmaster Team