Thank you everybody for your support and your information. Here follows an update on my actions to try to get my mailing list unblocked by AOL.
I have sent a large message to the postmasters of AOL and Compuserve (it seems that these two somehow are linked) explaining the nature of my mailing list etc (see the message below). Furthermore, I decided to inform the AOL subscribers individually from another Email address which is not hosted on the same server as the mailing list. Indeed it seems that the subscribers didn't receive any of my prior messages to them, so indeed I am banned. It is good to know that I can reach them now using my other Email account. I am getting really paranoia now, so I sent each of the 59 subsribers a separate mail (I didn't want to Bcc them) and I sent each mail with an interval of one minute, just to avoid any possibility that they might think this is "yet another of my spams".... I received confirmation from some subscribers that indeed they didn't receive my earlier messages and they now wrote Emails of complaint to the postmaster urging AOL to "whitelist" my mailing list and threatening them to quit their account. This might help. Let's wait and see. I didn't get any reply from AOL on my message so far. I am very much afraid that the recent Klesh type viruses could soon create a situation in which all mailing lists will be banned from large mail servers because we - as their administrators - (and the Email address of the list itself) will definitely exist in thousands of address books so the chance that our address will be abused by a virus on an affected computer is extremely high. This might become the end of the phenomenon "mailing list". Loek -----
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Loek Jehee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Please unblock Norbunet mailing list Cc: Bcc: X-Attachments: Dear Postmasters and administrators, I sincerely request you hereby to "whitelist" Email coming from [EMAIL PROTECTED] or from my abovementioned Email address [EMAIL PROTECTED] Recently I received many complaints that AOL subscribers and some Compuserve subscribers are not able to receive Email coming from my Email address or from Norbunet anymore. I am the administrator of an international Buddhist mailing list, called "Norbunet", that since over five years has been distributing Buddhist content to over 1100 subscribers which all are practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism. This mailing list is a source of daily inspiration and information to the subscribers. For some subscribers that live in remote areas it is often their only source of information on Buddhist events. Norbunet is a free and strictly moderated mailing list. It is a closed list intended for Buddhist practitioners of the Dzogchen lineage of Tibetan Buddhism only, or to those who are seriously interested in this and subscription is possible with my manual approval only. The list only forwards messages in plain ascii text format, and it is not possible to forward binary attachments to the list. Recently on the Internet there are more and more problems caused by abuse, like spam and viruses. Especially the recent Klesh worm is very troubling for mailing list administrators like myself, since my Email address will be in many address books of affected computers of subscribers. Hence there is a great chance that Email containing a virus is distributed which contains (parts of) the name of my Email address. You will understand that these messages in fact have nothing to do with me nor with the mailing list that I administer. All this will be very familiar to you and it is a very troubling development. It seems that you have blocked Email coming from Norbunet and/or my Email address. Please unblock this and whitelist these addresses. Thank you. I will inform the subscribers on any developments and I respectfully await your response. Kind regards, Loek Jehee - Norbunet administrator - Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
