A couple days ago, I set up AOL's "feedback loop" (though the loop part is a misnomer, since you can't actually respond to the messages) so I could monitor complaints against my employer's servers. Looking through the messages AOL says their members reported as spam, I noticed that none of them actually originated on my servers; they were all messages that were sent to addresses at the servers, then forwarded to AOL accounts, and since AOL records the IPs of all servers the message touched, I'm tainted by them.

So, how do you deal with this? My setup on the servers is like this:

* Sendmail
* Using Spamhaus SBL/XBL to deny listed servers at MTA level
* Most of the AOL forwarding is done via Sendmail's virtusertable
* Mail passed to SA via procmail on a per-user basis (not site-wide, yet, but that's in the plans)


The solutions I've already thought of and rejected:

* Invoking SA via milter and denying spam at the MTA level, but few customers would want spam denied outright (heck, I know I wouldn't). Of all these possible solutions, though, it's the only one that wouldn't leave my server's mark on the message.

* Setting up user accounts for the users with AOL forwards, filtering the mail through SA, then delivering it only if SA didn't mark it as spam, but that's a lot of users to set up.

* Doing the preceding with a single user account and redirecting the mail to the right addresses via procmail and/or formail, but that wouldn't scale well and would wind up being a mess.

* Invoking a policy of not forwarding to AOL accounts, but we're a web design/hosting firm with about 200 domains, and a handful of customers have AOL addresses, and that sort of policy wouldn't stand.

Any other workable suggestions? (And please, no suggestions that involve changing MTAs. It's not going to happen.)



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