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

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

This is a correction to the original blog entry "More on the Upcoming Feedback Loop Conversion". The statement "If the recipient information is in an X-header, it can be accessed by setting the mail reading software being used to show headers, or by viewing the source of the ARF report." was incorrect. Every email address in an x-header is redacted.

The original blog entry has been edited to reflect the correct information.

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 is pleased to announce the beta of our new web support tool for delivery issues. Please feel free to test it out and give us your thoughts and feedback. We hope it will provide a way for mailers to get help and resolution more quickly than ever before!

It must be stressed, though, that this is just a beta, and problems could arise. If you run into problems with the tool and need more immediate help, please call us. That said, we hope everything will go smoothly, and that you will like what we've put together!

David
Systems Programmer, AOL 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

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

Since the launch of AOL 9.0 in 2004, images and links received from unknown senders have been disabled. In May 2007, our web mail service was enhanced to disable images from unknown senders. Last week, our newest web mail product, Goa, was released. This WebSuite release completes the process by disabling links from unknown senders. Our aim is to provide our members with consistent safety features across all AOL applications.

Annalivia Ford
Senior Technical Account Manager, Postmaster Team

Invalid recipients are a fact of life for any mailer. You can minimize them with confirmed/double opt-in, but you still have typos and people who change their email addresses. We get that - it's cool.

At the same time, invalid recipients are used industry-wide as a metric of how good a mailing list is, and high invalid recipient numbers are associated with unsolicited mail and namespace mapping. That's not cool.

We've always factored invalid recipients into a sender's reputation, but we want to give you a heads up that we're refining the process a bit. As such, we would like to remind mailers that high numbers of invalid recipients is a Bad Thing and will result in poor delivery and removal from the whitelist.

Now, I know you, and you are asking, "What's a high number?" That's easy. A high number is a number higher than that which we consider indicative of a good mailer. If your invalid recipient stats are consistent with mailers similar to you, this shouldn't matter much to you. If you generate more invalid recipients than mailers similar to you, you will see a negative impact on your delivery in the near future.

David
Systems Programmer, 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