Grex Garage Conference

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Grex Garage Item 24: AOL and TW rejecting all grex e-mail
Entered by herronjt on Fri Jan 6 19:18:56 UTC 2006:

AOL and TW are rejecting all e-mail coming from grex IP
address 216.86.77.194 due to complaints of spam and bulk
e-mail. Is there any way we can get these blocks lifted?

8 responses total.

#1 of 8 by glenda on Sat Jan 7 03:17:16 2006:

Really funny since most of the people using Grex to do their spamming come
in from AOL and AOL hasn't seen fit to respond to our complaints about their
members.

#2 of 8 by bhoward on Sat Jan 7 06:47:06 2006:

The first step will be to stop allowing grex to be a source of spam.
There are a few discussions currently underway in other items on
ways to change our exim configuration to implement daily outbound
mail limits to make grex an uneconomical place from which to spam.

Once we've cleaned up our act, then we can see about getting ourselves
off the blacklists.  I don't see any point in attempting to do so
before then.

#3 of 8 by herronjt on Sat Jan 7 17:43:38 2006:

Any idea of how soon that will be?

#4 of 8 by gull on Sat Jan 7 23:06:28 2006:

Spamcop (and maybe AOL, too) use complaint-based systems. If the complaints stop, the blacklisting will eventually expire.

#5 of 8 by saw on Wed Mar 22 16:28:28 2006:

Hey!  We should all learn from AOL here -- you deal with abusive hosts
by blocking them.  Thus, we should hunt down all of AOL's netblocks (I
think they even publish them somewhere) and block them. :)

On a serious note, AOL has blocked our E-Mail server at work on many
occasions.  This is mainly due to the fact that we have several large
mailing lists (newsletters, not marketing), AOL (l)users sign up for
them, then decide a few months later they don't want/don't have time
for the mailings, couldn't be bothered to read and follow the handy
unsubscribe instructions sent on *every* E-Mail, and just resort to
clicking on the "report as SPAM" button to get rid of it.

The end result?  They still receive it each day, they continue to
click the button each day, sometimes we end up blocked because of
it, but at the end of the day, they still receive it.

AOL's suggestion?  Set up a feedback loop.  We did.  We still have
it.  It's totally unhelpful.  I get 3-4 complaints a day from some
of these lists, most likely from someone who doesn't want it anymore
and is too lazy (or doesn't know how to follow directions) to remove
themselves from the listserv.  Fine.  But, AOL masks the address of
the member who complained, so I have no idea who it was.  If I knew
who it was, I could unsubscribe them.  The only way to get around
this (and AOL has even said to do this) is to include their address
somewhere in the message.  That would require a lot more work on the
part of our servers, which I am not interested in creating.  Plus,
all this to work around someone who is too lazy to take two minutes
to remove themselves?  Not interested.

I'm not sure if Grex is setup with a feedback loop or not.  If not,
it might be a wisde idea.  Just bear in mind that the recipient's
address isn't going to be listed in the complaints.  Other than
that, it's handy to know what is originating from your netblocks
and getting complained about.  If they would unmask the address of
who complained, I'd be a happy camper.

#6 of 8 by tod on Tue Apr 4 22:21:27 2006:

I think its ridiculous for Grex to expend resources fixing AOL's list
technology.

#7 of 8 by saw on Wed Apr 5 20:39:02 2006:

True.

At our site, I try to be a decent netadmin.  We have aowkring abuse@
and postmaster@, make every effort not to spew backscatter, we don't
let spammers run amuck on our network, etc.  Sure, things can happen
from time to time (and will with any network) -- but, once I am aware
of it, it's dealt with swiftly.

However, I do not respond to AOL complaints that are a result of
their members signing up for a list we host, then deciding they no
longer want the mail, and are too lazy to unsubscribe, so they just
start reporting it as spam.  The unsubscribe feature is there for
a reason -- to allow you to administer your subscription and so I
don't have to spend all day fooling with it.  I'm not interested
in taking unsubscribe requests via complaints either.  Period.

We have to draw a line somewhere.

#8 of 8 by maus on Thu Nov 2 13:56:39 2006:

I think the problem that some users have with the unsubscribe 
instructions is not mo much laziness as it is that several years ago, 
spam would come with similar unsubscribe instructions, which would just 
verify that the address was live and had a human being reading it, 
thereby entitling said human being to *more spam*. How does the saying 
go? Once burned, twice shy.

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