Barbara!
Sounds like AOL turned on you after it left the listserv at StJohns alone
for while.
You see two errors. One claims that the message contains spammish URLs. As
it is a 5xx series error, I find it unlikely your list members actually
received these messages.
The other is a 24hour-long block. All e-mail from your listserv node
(based on the IP-address) will be blocked during that period. AOL thinks
listserv is a spam relay for two reasons:
- lazy folks who don't bother to look up how to unsubscribe use the 'this
is junk' button in the AOL e-mail software.
- list owners, who receive spam via the -request@ address, report valid
spam as junk getting your host in trouble.
The first you can solve by:
- requesting AOLs Feedback-Loop
- changing the headers of the lists that appear in the reports to use
Auto-Delete=Yes,...,Probe(1).
- Then, once every other day you have the opportunity to recognize the
junking list member in the Return-Path header.
It's a slow route that takes weeks to take effect, and the flow of such
reports won't ever stop.
I place folks on NOMAIL automatically upon receiving an abuse report of a
probed message. The script e-mails them a kind explanation. Of those less
than 10% goes back to 'mail' status, 25% junks your kind note, and the
remainder is presumably glad that their subscription 'disappeared'.
For the 2nd, the list owners:
- You could teach them to use the limited filters available in AOL and
then not to use the junk-feature in the folder that -request@ mail is
delivered to. Note that most spam won't have the -request@ address in
the To-field.
- or, what I ended up doing, is relaying all e-mail to AOL based owners
through SpamAssassin. Which is an administrative pain, but was in the
end the only thing that resolved the semi-regular blocks.
White-listing may also help. The feedback-loop and white-listing request
form are available at http://postmaster.info.aol.com/
If you read the small print of the white-listing, you make yourself
contentually responsible for all mail you deliver. No postmaster of a
mailing list host is likely going to commit to something like that.
After a month, we got white-listed without that clause.
I spent a -lot- of time on this since October. Before you dive into this,
you want to consider if a single provider is worth dozens of hours of your
time. Ultimately you're one-sidely responding to continuing fires,
basically doing their postmaster work for them.
Oh, one more thing. The AOL members are going to hear from their ISP that
you/the postmaster needs to contact them. Reality is, only the AOL member
has a contract and is the only person who will (eventually/hopefully) be
listened to. Encourage your members to persevere through the 3-4 levels of
standard answers the AI-bot will fire off.
> Let me say, they are making up for lost time.
I'll be short: Good luck.
Jasper
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