AOL Postmaster Blog

AOL hosting mail for MMC/mail.com domains

Christine Borgia — 2009-10-30T14:01:00+00:00

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

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Announcement: No More Report Cards

Christine Borgia — 2009-08-24T16:08:00+00:00

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

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AOL Changing Mailer Daemon Error Senders

Christine Borgia — 2009-07-21T16:05:00+00:00

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

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AOL Postmaster Support Restored

David Zakar — 2009-06-27T23:33:00+00:00

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

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Postmaster Support Temporarily Offline

David Zakar — 2009-06-26T14:24:00+00:00

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

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Implementing Captcha on Postmaster Tools, Limit Requests

Christine Borgia — 2009-06-19T13:57:00+00:00

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

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Scheduled Postmaster Support Tools Maintenance (6/11, 1-3PM)

David Zakar — 2009-06-10T10:52:00+00:00

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

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FBL and WL Request System Back Online

David Zakar — 2009-06-05T12:31:00+00:00

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

Have a good weekend!

-David

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FBL and WL Request System Temporarily Offline

David Zakar — 2009-06-04T12:15:00+00:00

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

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Re: AOL Postmaster Blog System Maintenance, Loss of Feedback Loops

Christine Borgia — 2009-01-31T17:06:00+00:00

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

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System Maintenance, Loss of Feedback Loops

Christine Borgia — 2009-01-30T13:11:00+00:00

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

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AOL Postmaster Support Restored

Christine Borgia — 2009-01-29T12:48:00+00:00

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.

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Postmaster Support Offline Temporarily

Christine Borgia — 2009-01-27T09:55:00+00:00

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.

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ALERT: AOL Postmaster Support down from Jan 16th - Jan 20th, 2009

Annalivia Ford — 2009-01-14T14:40:00+00:00

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

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Change to the Report Card Process - Part Deux

Christine Borgia — 2008-12-10T14:44:00+00:00

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

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Change to the Report Card Process

Christine Borgia — 2008-11-25T15:52:00+00:00

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:

From: postmaster@aol.com [mailto:postmaster@aol.com]
Sent: 9/6/2005 9:45:07 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Subject: AOL email concerns for "domain name"

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 0.30%.

This email is only an indication that your domain's mail stream has exceeded a pre-defined complaint threshold; it is not necessarily indicative of a spam problem. We send a report card to every domain that exceeds this threshold, regardless of what type of mail is sent. We hope that it may be useful to help identify potential issues.

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.

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

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Online Sender Support Tools

Christine Borgia — 2008-11-06T13:16:00+00:00

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.

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IP Reputation, the Whitelist, and Inbox Delivery at AOL

Christine Borgia — 2008-10-24T15:10:00+00:00

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

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Submit Your Dynamic Ranges to the PBL

David Zakar — 2008-09-23T11:39:00+00:00

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

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Correction about FBL Redaction

Annalivia Ford — 2008-09-09T15:12:00+00:00

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.

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