Support Library > General Information > AOL Mail Policy

AOL Mail Policy Regarding spam

October 4, 2006

It is imperative that all users read and understand this notice regarding AOL.

AOL has a system where users can tag email they receive at AOL as spam. However, their system has a serious flaw in the way that it blocks email. Please see below.

In the graphic above, at #1, a spammer sends some email to you at you@yourdomain.com. The mail arrives at #2, your server account. If you have your email address set up as a forwarding account (email alias) to AOL, the server only acts as a slave and sends the mail on to your AOL account which is #3 above.

There are two cases that happen. AOL may see the email as spam or you flag the email as spam when it gets to your AOL mailbox. Here's the problem. AOL does not block the real sender which is the spammer at #1. Instead, they block the server that sent the mail into AOL which is #2, the server hosting your account. This not only blocks email you might want but it effects every account on the server that may want to send mail to an AOL user.

We also have an anti-spam system, but it blocks the source of the email (#1) which is exactly the way it should work. We purchased a commercial system from a company whose sole function is to design anti-spam systems (see: http://www.spamfurnace.com). We can only describe AOL's system as defective. We have been in contact since last week with AOL about this issue, but their support is next to non-existent.

Please take one of the following actions.

1. Don't flag any mail as spam when it gets to your AOL account IF it was sent on from your hosting account. In doing so you are really only blocking yourself from mail you might want, as well as others using the same server.

2. Take AOL out of the picture by setting up a real mail account instead of forwarding it on. The more mail is handled the chances increase that there are going to be problems. Each time mail is forwarded it looks more and more like spam to receiving servers. This is because spammers use this trick of relaying mail from one server to another before it is finally sent to the end recipient.