Redirects and Spam

[trauma]

I just made a startling discovery about redirects. I was getting a large number of spam complaints from AOL yesterday. And I noticed in the headers that they were sent to users who redirect their email to AOL accounts. But the rub is that I take the hit because when the user notifies AOL that the message is spam, it flags my IP address as the source rather than the true origin of the message.

This poses a major problem; because as far as AOL is concerned, if you get enough of these complaints you're blacklisted as a spammer.

Are there any ways around this?

 

[Gorgon@]

Not really. Pretty sad policy from such a big company, eh? You can check out:

http://postmaster.aol.com

to find out how to join their 'feedback loop' program. This at least alerts you to complaints made about spam that 'came from your IP space'.

hope this helps,
M

 

[trauma]

Yeah, that's actually where the complaints came from. I signed up for a feedback loop to help stay on good terms with them.

Now I'm almost tempted to restrict people from using redirects. If all the redirected messages appear to originate from our IP space, then it puts everyone at risk of being banned.

 

[Gorgon@]

When I can identify the complainer (which is not always possible), I have a canned message I send them to sort of clue them into the situation. That helps a little.

It hasn't been bad enough for AOL to blacklist us yet. I really hope that if that happens they will respond quickly to the situation since we are not the originators of the spam.

Also, there is a way to 'whitelist' your address space. I haven't explored it in full detail yet but I think that if you can do that, the immediate problem is fixed. IIRC, info on how to get whitelisted is available at the same URL.

M