On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 09:16:15AM -0700, Mike Jackson wrote:
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.)
As I understand it, once you have your server listed on the AOL feedback loop, it is whitelisted, so that may solve the immediate problem.
<rant> The big problem with AOL's system is clueless (l)users who hit the "report as spam" button accidentally or intentionally. I am the owner of a mailing list hosted on the server of an IPP. We started getting postings rejected by AOL's servers. I voluntarily listed myself as the stuckee to get the feedback for the list server. I found that the vast majority of feedback I got was from some subscriber to one of the other lists, who, I guess, thinks hitting the spam button is a good way to get unsubscribed from the list, because s/he has about half the brains of a good fence post and can't figure out how to unsubscribe him/herself. The other problem is that, for privacy reasons, AOL expunges the recipient's address, so we have no idea whom to unsubscribe.
It's a stupid system.
I heard of one list owner who solved his problem by unsubscribing all his AOL listers, I think, after posting or emailing them that all of them need to subscribe themselves. </rant>
Cheers,
Bob,
I too join the AOL feedback loop after seeing massive aol denials.
I run a bunch of mailing lists here as well and have them all now running Mailman and using the personalization setting with a little snip of code that shows who reported it as spam, if I get a report, then I come down on them like a thundering herd of buffalo. They get one warning then they're unsubbed and banned. I've told a list I run, which is the worst one for getting reported to aols stupid system, to write aols tech suppport and let them know the buttons to report as spam and delete are way too close and can be hit by accident.
Works for me anyway, YMMV,
-Doc
