One point I'd like to mention is that most AOL antispam guys also have an aol.net address. When AOL.COM has stopped accepting your mail, aol.net still will. [Postmaster, for example]. Deepak Jain AiNET
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Stephen J. Wilcox Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 8:28 PM To: Robert Mathews Cc: North American Network Operators Subject: Re: Whitelisting, AOL E.mail etc.
This was presented at this weeks NANOG by AOL:
http://www.nanog.org/mtg-0310/spam.html
On Fri, 24 Oct 2003, Robert Mathews wrote:
All:
I have weighed the benefit of posting Vs. NOT posting this
information to
NANOG. I found that posting this note to the larger community was important perhaps for two reasons. They are:
1) The problems that we at the University of Hawai'i experienced from 10/17 - 10/20 with AOL, effected a fairly large userbase. Therefore, I am inclined to believe that someone who is at least partially responsible for the operation or managment of another network similar to our own - could benefit from having this information (I know of at least 2 other large University systems that were effected by the same issue).
2) Having the requisite AOL contact information in any event - might be important toward at least partially achieving a resolve to future problems.
Now, a brief recap. Beginning the afternoon of the 17th (EDT), all E.mail traffic from UH' namespace to AOL began to bounce. This condition did not resolve until the morning of the 20th (EDT). Primarily, this was due to AOL's whitelisting, and whitelisting policies. Upon discovering this problem, I began an inquiry into the condition. We were informed that AOL had received complaints from 'its members', who stated that our central E.mail server was responsible for instances of spamming.
Subsequently, AOL personnel and I were able to hold a dialog over the weekend to resolve pertinent issues regarding the matter. I wish to give praise the AOL Team, who responded quickly, and were both cooperative and sincere with respect to their desire to resolve issues. I MUST credit Carl Hutzler, Dir. of AntiSpam Operations at AOL, and Charles Stiles, Manager of the Postmaster-Team at AOL especially, for their commitment to resolve this issue expediently. Traffic exchange between AOL and us have been re-established.
For your reference, I wish to present the following statement from Carl to me, which may be helpful to you as well.
"Anyone can request to receive the complaints that mail transmitted from their IP space generated via a Complaint Feedback Loop. All we need is:
1. Address space (CIDR or otherwise) 2. Abuse email address where you want them sent
We will send them in realtime as we get them with the entire original spam included for your analysis. Feel free to have them send this data to me and/or our abuse phone number for now ..."
The relevant AOL contacts are as follows:
Carl Hutzler Director, AntiSpam Operations America Online Mail Operations cdhutzler@aol.com 703.265.5521 work 703.915.6862 cell Carl Hutzler <cdhutzler@aol.com>
or
Charles Stiles <stilesch@aol.com> Manager, Postmaster-Team - AOL
All my best, Robert. -------