Dealing with False AOL Spam Reports?

aohell-guy asks: "I handle the mail servers for a business that has 20% of our members using AOL. We regularly send out email that our members have agreed to receive. In AOL 8.0, it was possible to click a single message and report it as spam. You would be prompted to confirm the spam report, although no details explaining what happens with the report are given to the user. Through AOL's Postmaster site, it is possible to get in on the spam 'Feedback Loop,' where AOL will send you the spam reports it receives for mail sent from your servers. When you receive a report, you are supposed to immediately cease the sending of email to that AOL address. The only problem is, we have found that most of the time the AOL users are reporting our email as spam on accident! These complaints can negatively impact your ability to send email to AOL members. How are you handling the false reports?"

"In version 9.0, AOL made two incredibly stupid mistakes which make false positive spam reports skyrocket. First is they now allow their users to select multiple messages at once and report them all as spam. Second, when you hit the spam report button (which is located DIRECTLY next to the delete button), it IMMEDIATELY files the spam report -- there is no confirmation required. Sure, the AOL user can see they made a mistake and move your email back out of their spam folder...but the report is still filed against your server. Rack up enough of these reports, and you will not be able to send mail to AOL. We have had plenty of complaints come in, and we delete their accounts as they do -- except with our paying members. We ask them if they really want to cancel? In ALL cases but one, we have received replies stating it was an accident.

We have spoken to people within AOL that deal with the mail. (Amazingly, it is not too hard to speak with them if you are a business sending email to AOL users.) The ones we've spoken to are not happy with these changes in AOL 9.0, and admit they result in many false positives.

If you are sending a lot of email to AOL users, you will want to get in on their feedback loop ASAP, and also look into getting on AOL's 'whitelist,' which ensures that your mail will not be silently filtered into the bit bucket, as long as you keep your mail bounces and spam reports (ahem!) at a low level."

Whaaaat? Cluesless AOL users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would've thought that possible.

My email never gets blocked by AOL

[Grey Ninja]

Just put "Enlarge your Member" in the subject line. It NEVER gets marked as spam in my experience. I sell about 200 pounds of snake oil a day to AOL users.

Great story!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for not using the trite "read on" phrase!

Catch-22

[Anonymous Coward]

Like most folks, you have to target Windows users, since that is where 90% [for example] [google.com] of your audience is.

On the other hand, you might want to ignore AOL users as clueless and so, who cares about them.

However, if you are selling something, these are just the suckers you might want.

what to do, what to do...

fax or mailout?

[narkotix]

Thought about faxing or snail mailing them instead?

Re:it is a tough situation

[circusnews]

The only other thing I could think of is maybe put a note in the messages of your AOL users asking them to contact AOL and fix their policy. The chances of this working are beyond slim, but it will make it appear to your users that you are trying to serve them the best that you can.

I have found having 20 or 30 AOL users call AOL's tech support screaming about AOL bouncing importiant mail as spam gets you off the list fairly quickly.

Standard practice at AOL

[techno-vampire]

Years ago, I realized how AOL works: it walks around with a gun in each hand. Each gun points at one of its own feet. Then, at random intervals, it pulls one or both triggers. AOL shooting it in the foot isn't news; AOL managing not to shoot itself in the foot would be news indeed.

Re:SourceForge mailing lists are blocked by AOL

[Neon Spiral Injector]

And the circle will be complete. AOLers should have never been let loose on the Internet in the first place. :P

Re:Whaaaat? Cluesless AOL users?

[l810c]

Not only are they Clueless, but your typical AOL user has:

A Short Flaccid Penis
A High Mortgage Rate
High Insurance Rates
A Hugh Amount of Debt
No Online Diplomas
Does Not work from home..

I am going to invoice AOL for their shit

[Anonymous Coward]

I regularly get bounced spam virus reports from AOL because a virus somewhere forged my headers. Unfortunately, I cannot complain to AOL because AOL blocks my cable modem IP address because it is residential.

So AOL can send mail to me, but won't let me complain back.

I am collecting up a few of these. I am going to bill AOL with a nice official invoice. I doubt it will acheive much.