Eric Thomas wrote the following on 6/19/2007 7:39 AM:

<snip>

>> Following AOL's own instructions to filter mail from unwanted
>> senders to the spam folder will cause those messages to be reported
>> as spam.
>
> This is even more absurd. If there is one specific poster on the list
> whose messages you do not care to read, for instance because he writes
> in a language you do not speak, the entire list is reported as spam.

I never said I agreed with AOL's methods of implementation. :-) Just
pointing out that it isn't always the subscriber doing something stupid
on their own. My guess, to give a very generous benefit of the doubt, is
that AOL started that recommendation before they started using the spam
folders to justify blacklisting senders.

<snip>

> 4. I get a barrage of spam reports that I cannot even act on manually
> because they lack the necessary information. But unless I magically
> act on them anyway, I will be blacklisted and go back to point 2.

One trick we found was to turn on daily passive probing. If the
subscriber was deleting all mail, or the first post from the list, we
would have an address to respond to. Jasper wrote a nifty little program
that identified emails with the passive probe so we didn't have to spend
hours sifting through them. Actually, passive probing seems to work the
number-of-days-specified + 1, so a daily probe actually goes out every
other day. Still, that was enough to track down a significant number of
subscribers who were reporting list mail as spam, and discover that it
wasn't always deliberate.
--
Karen Reznek
head listowner -- Asperger
Director -- ICORS