AOL Postmaster

Kerplunk · 1 Feb 2007 at 11:48

Has anyone had a problem with AOL blocking your IP?

I have been round in circles and back round again. :mad:

Basically have blocked our work IP and no-one at AOL can unblock it!!

I had an e-mail from [email protected] saying that our whiteist request was 'denied'... with a phone number TO CALL 1-888-212-5537 < wtf ? is that even real?

I have checked out www.postmaster.info.aol.com and we have RDNS enabled.

We need out IP unblocked as some of our very important clients use AOL.

Anyone got a direct contact/phone number that they know works? :confused:

ruffneck · 1 Feb 2007 at 11:56

LOL! Good luck!!!

sorry for my un-informative post, but trying to get your domain un-blocked from AOL will be very hard work!!

Kerplunk · 1 Feb 2007 at 12:01

No-one seems to give two hoots.

One even said. "whats an IP"

Phone and receiver exchanged a good firm grip. :mad:

Redrum · 3 Feb 2007 at 00:51

Kerplunk said:
Has anyone had a problem with AOL blocking your IP?

Yes, major problems. In fairness, they were legitimate in blocking our server as it was sending out spam, but that was stopped in December so theres no reason for them to still be blocking us. Soon we will probably just give up and inform our customers that AOL email accounts don't work properly so they shouldn't use them, and possible put a note on our websites that send emails to the same effect.

Do post if you do get somewhere with them though.

Avalon · 3 Feb 2007 at 11:49

The number is real, it's American, hence why it doesn't follow the uk number style.

*edit* Ignore my inability to comprehend anything that early this morning *edit*

Redrum · 3 Feb 2007 at 12:12

Avalon, I think you have got the wrong end of the stick regarding my post and the op’s. I am talking about my company’s mail server that is located in a proper server farm connected to a major ip provider. The problem is AOLs mail server won’t accept mail from our mail server. Our server is very secure. The spam incident we had did not come from the server itself being compromised, it was a header injection attack on a contact form written by someone else.

At the end of the day, anyone that has run a mail server will tell you how annoying spammers are. They are very persistent and its difficult to guarantee 100% that they will never be able to get spam onto your server. When that does happen, AOL are perfectly within their rights to blacklist the server, but there should be a process to become removed from the blacklist once you have stopped the spam. Its their own customers they are hurting, as they are not getting all their emails so I don’t have a problem telling them to ditch AOL and have a proper pop3 from us instead if it comes to it, although I am still hoping it doesn’t.

Avalon said:
Yes we have periodic down time but it's less than running the risk that we'll suffer a powercut longer than the UPS or some idiot takes out our lines by accident.

In your case, sounds like outsourcing was the right thing to do because you probably weren’t big enough to have a proper set up in a datacentre that guarantees 100% uptime of power and internet connectivity.

Avalon · 3 Feb 2007 at 12:49

Redrum said:
Avalon, I think you have got the wrong end of the stick regarding my post and the op’s.

Quite possibly :confused:

I read the op's post as he was black listed on a customer side not DNSBL

Redrum said:
In your case, sounds like outsourcing was the right thing to do because you probably weren’t big enough to have a proper set up in a datacentre that guarantees 100% uptime of power and internet connectivity.

Yes and No. Circa 80 Offices nationally with an undiclosed number in the EU/US and a fair few home workers for each but that's another story.

Kerplunk · 19 Feb 2007 at 16:27

Redrum said:
Do post if you do get somewhere with them though.

Well, 3 weeks later and we are unblocked.

I had to keep sending the same e-mail (from a hotmail account) before I got a response, apparently they (the AOL Postmaster) does not have a direct phone line, so I cant ring them, nor can they put me though.

So the only way was by e-mail, which is shocking! but 3 weeks down the line and were sorted.

ruffneck · 19 Feb 2007 at 16:30

and wait another 3 weeks to be blocked again

Redrum · 19 Feb 2007 at 21:40

Kerplunk said:
Well, 3 weeks later and we are unblocked.

I had to keep sending the same e-mail (from a hotmail account) before I got a response, apparently they (the AOL Postmaster) does not have a direct phone line, so I cant ring them, nor can they put me though.

So the only way was by e-mail, which is shocking! but 3 weeks down the line and were sorted.

Nice to hear. The server I run is unblocked too

Never heard anything back from them, I just noticed the emails going through a few weeks ago. They do have some sort of whitelist which maybe be worth applying to to try and stop it happening again.

Beansprout · 19 Feb 2007 at 21:44

We handle thousands of e-mails per day and have had servers blocked by the major ISPs a few times. Yahoo can be a total pain, MSN have a *fantastic* reporting/resolution interface, and AOL are somewhere in the middle.

Have you scouted round postmaster.aol.com and setup a feedback loop, etc? What we've done is submit requests through their report form for the relevant error message, and picked up the phone.

Maybe I've just been lucky, but they seem pretty responsive to me (issues resolved in a couple of days), even if the people on the end of the phone sounded like zombies