As you have identified, your ideas don't work because the problem is just a fatal flaw in AOL's system of users improperly using the "this is spam" as a filtering system. They often use it rather than unsubscribing from legitimate mailing lists.
#1 doesn't work because people mark "legit" mail because they are lazy. #2 doesn't work because people are idiots and our efforts to educate them have failed on this idea. #3 is a bit harsh and likely to cause problems as more and more ISPs start to implement similar systems DO NOT RECOMMEND YOU DO WHAT you suggested doing in what I have marked as option #4. It just sounds like a privacy nightmare. I suggest you apply for whitelist status and ignore the SCOMP TOS on a day to day basis. I look for patterns and issues out of whack but there is no way to make it nil and I think AOL understands this which is why their rules are to the best of my knowledge, percentage based. > 1. Filter mail to AOL more heavily, as in rejecting more legit mail. > This is not only hard to accomplish but will probably result in more > helpdesk calls about mail not being delivered. > > 2. Find all the forwards to AOL once a month or so and send them all > mail asking them not to hit "report as spam" for forwarded mail. My > guess is that plenty of them will start hitting "report as spam" when > they get the reminders, and we'll be worse off than when we started. > > 3. Forbid people to forward to AOL. This is pretty much what AOL is > telling us by their actions. This will create more helpdesk calls, > and start chipping away at the alumni forwarding program. > [#4 KAM] > I don't like any of these, so I haven't given a whole lot of time to > figuring out option No. 1. I guess a variant of No. 1 is to bounce > back everything telling the sender what the AOL address is. > I think filtering by final recipient can't be done in a practical way. > There, if someone takes that as a challenge, good. By final I mean > by recipient after aliases and .forward files have been applied. sendmail -bv might be what you want. In your milter, run sendmail -bv and the destination as well as cache the information. for example, I added a forward in my kam dir to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (munged to protect the innocent) sendmail -bv kam [EMAIL PROTECTED] deliverable: mailer esmtp, host somewherelese.com., user [EMAIL PROTECTED] Same with aliases & virtusertables: sendmail -bv [EMAIL PROTECTED] adams... deliverable: mailer local, user adams kmcgrail... deliverable: mailer local, user kmcgrail adamsb... deliverable: mailer local, user adamsb Regards, KAM _______________________________________________ Visit http://www.mimedefang.org and http://www.roaringpenguin.com MIMEDefang mailing list [email protected] http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/mailman/listinfo/mimedefang
