Tony writes: > I get: > [<02>] The reason of the delivery failure was: > > 550-The IP address you are using to connect to AOL is a dynamic > (residential) 550-IP address. AOL will not accept future e-mail > transactions from your 550-IP address until your ISP removes your IP > from its list of dynamic > 550-(residential) IP addresses. For additional information, please > visit 550-http://postmaster.info.aol.com.
Did you call AOL and ask them to remove you from their list of dynamic IP addresses? If so, what did they say? I'm not on their list of dynamic addresses. I'm not on their open-relay or proxy lists, either. The lady who answered the phone claimed that I need to have a reverse lookup that matches my announced domain when I connect (at least, as far as she seemed to understand what I was talking about). But when I reconfigure sendmail to send a HELO with the exact rDNS name for my IP address, AOL still refuses the e-mail. I think it is looking at MX records or something, but the lady at the network center didn't know what an MX record was, so I knew I was wasting my time with her, and she couldn't help further or refer me to anyone else. This prevented me from making any progress. Some have suggested that I smarthost through my upstream ISP's mail server. But they bounce my e-mail, too ("relaying denied"). It seems that their configuration believes my IP address to be a "foreign" address, even though they assigned it to me. They never updated their IP address database when they added addresses. When I e-mailed them about it, the person I talked to didn't even understand the difference between a login name and password and an IP address, and simply assured me over and over that my login and password were valid. So that was a waste of time as well. > It is not viable for me to refuse mail from AOL > since my wife's nephew works there so most of her > family uses AOL for email. How does she e-mail back to them, in that case? They may be able to get Internet access from other ISPs for less money. As I've said, I'm bouncing all incoming AOL mail now, and, ironically, it has eliminated a lot of spam, so a great deal of spam comes from AOL.COM, or appears to, at least. > I was not AOL bashing, because they are not the > only ones doing this. CS.COM and NETSCAPE.NET are doing it, but they are part of AOL. I suppose others are doing it. FREEBSD.ORG bounces my e-mail because they don't like what I have to say, but their e-mail administrator, in his infinite wisdom, apparently didn't realize that if he bounces all my e-mail, I cannot unsubscribe from their lists. They are spamming my server with hundreds of messages a day. I may have to complain to their upstream ISP, since sending unsolicited e-mail and not allowing me to put a stop to it is spamming. > As Vixie has pointed out, the current state of > affairs is the result of the protocol design. We > as the IETF need to step up and provide an alternate > design if we want the system to change. I agree in principle, but I can't think of any changes in the protocol offhand that would not require changes in every machine in the world. That isn't practical, so the only practical change is a backward-compatible change that excludes only spam. The problem is that spam doesn't look any different from legitimate e-mail to a machine. > Some components of a new design need to be a viable > trust model, and irrefutable traceability. Neither of these meet the criterion of "no changes to all the machines in the world." In order for them to work, every machine has to change, everywhere. That isn't going to happen; and if it doesn't happen, the scheme won't work, and/or tons of legitimate e-mail will be lost.