Re: [Declude.JunkMail] OT- Getting a URL de-listed on AOL

[Matt]

My point was that commissioned individuals in businesses like this (real estate and auto dealerships) tend to look to bulk mailings as a way to enhance their business opportunities.  My neighbor for instance just got his license and he keeps telling me how he needs to set up an E-mail list.  He's definitely the type of guy that will do a poor job of preening his list following complaints, he'll probably use his AOL account to do his mailings (if they allow the volume), and he'll probably send out messages with little or no value.  Essentially, these people don't know better, and they need to be instructed by their business as to exactly what acceptable E-mail use is.  If his company is large enough to have several dozens of commissioned individuals taking upon themselves to become small-time spammers, then that can create problems for the company as a whole, as is likely indicated in Marc's situation. Now if I was the guy at AOL that made the determination as to whether or not to remove Marc's domain from my blacklist, my first question would be, "what have you done to limit the abuse/spam?"  This is why I recommended that he start there. As far as "We hate spam too" links on home pages go, they are highly indicative of companies with poor control, a lack of best practices, or even a front to fool E-mail administrators into not blacklisting them.  That would be a red flag in my book.  It's hardly any different from the disclaimers that you often see on spam coming from sources with 1,000 different domain names.  Not that the idea of being anti-spam is bad, but this has become too commonly used to trick people. If Marc wants to get off of AOL's list, he's probably going to have to work pretty hard to get it done.  Word is that they are notoriously non-responsive regardless.  If he finds the right person and the process turns out to be easy enough, it's still a good idea to get his ducks in order so that future problems might be prevented.  I'm quite sure that this is good advice. Matt Sanford Whiteman wrote: The first step would be to put in place measures that stopped the unsolicited mailings. This is easy to say, but probably impossible to do. If they have not pruned their lists of unwanted "memberships," that's probably because they no longer have any idea which ones were solicited or opted-in, which ones were illegally scraped--or even which ones are bouncing. So the only way to stop the unsolicited mailings is to stop _all_ mailings to AOL and immediately send gentle "probe only" messages to "refresh" members at other domains; you should also post a "We Hate Spam, Too" button on your home page with a link for immediate and permanent removal to imply good faith. And this needs to be taken to the executive level to set clear policy. I'd consider this a very grave problem for a consumer-oriented business to be barred from the leading consumer ISP. But it's a *business* problem, and as a technical person, your only responsibility should be to explain it, not solve it. --Sandy ------------------------------------ Sanford Whiteman, Chief Technologist Broadleaf Systems, a division of Cypress Integrated Systems, Inc. e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] SpamAssassin plugs into Declude! http://www.mailmage.com/download/software/freeutils/SPAMC32/Release/ --- [This E-mail was scanned for viruses by Declude Virus (http://www.declude.com)] --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com. -- ===================================================== MailPure custom filters for Declude JunkMail Pro. http://www.mailpure.com/software/ =====================================================