aol blocks my email

[deb]

From time to time, my messages to aol.com members bounces.

The current bounce message has a link to http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/421rlycs4.html

This site says "This error message indicates that your email has been identified as coming from a server or web site that may have a compromised script or program available."

Earlier this year, the message said the problem was too much spam. When I complained to bluehost, they replied "AOL will only accept mail from us if the total spam messages sent to them from our mail servers is less than 0.4 messages per 100!" and there was little bluehost could do about this. The problem seemed to get better for a while, but now I'm getting this message.

Can anyone help with this? This is a major problem for me. I otherwise like bluehost very much, but I absolutely have to be able to communicate with aol subscribers.

Thanks.

[Early Out]

Are you using an email client program (like Outlook) to send out your email? If so, you can almost always set up your BH mail account within that client program so that it actually routes your outgoing mail through your ISP's SMTP server, instead of BH's. The FROM address is still your BH address, and replies still go there. Only the outbound routing changes.

[Barbouille]

Hi

In reply to your post

I use a aol (aim actually) mail account for testing purposes only.

I just sent two emails to my aim account; one from Horde in Bluehost and one from Mozilla Thunderbird configured to use Bluehost SMTP server to send mail. Both made it to my aim account and were not rejected by AOL server.

Hope this helps and does not confuse even more

Have a nice day

[Barbouille]

Hi again

Just forgot to mention that I have a brother whose email address is xyz@aol.com

I communicate with him via email regularly (read almost every day) and my emails originating from Bluehost are never rejected by the AOL server.

Regards

[Early Out]

I just sent two emails to my aim account.... Both made it to my aim account and were not rejected by AOL server.When these blocks occur, they usually involve just one or two of the BH mail servers, not all of them. The actual server that handles your outgoing message isn't tied to your box number - it's handled dynamically (probably to balance the load).

So, if your messages happen to go out on one of the other, non-blacklisted servers, they go through just fine. You can get a different result by sending the same message to the same address, but just a few minutes apart. Makes it very tough to test!

[Barbouille]

When these blocks occur, they usually involve just one or two of the BH mail servers, not all of them. The actual server that handles your outgoing message isn't tied to your box number - it's handled dynamically (probably to balance the load).

So, if your messages happen to go out on one of the other, non-blacklisted servers, they go through just fine. You can get a different result by sending the same message to the same address, but just a few minutes apart. Makes it very tough to test!

Why would AOL blacklist some BH servers and not all of them ? Any idea ? This seems strange to me.

[Early Out]

Why would AOL blacklist some BH servers and not all of them ? Any idea ? This seems strange to me.Server blocks usually occur when the receiving ISP detects a lot of spam coming from a particular server. This is almost always a purely automated process. The mail server says, "ah, I see we're getting a lot of spam from the server at IP address 69.123.45.92, so we'll block that server." There isn't anyone actually sitting down and making a reasoned decision about what servers to block. So, it's very easy for one or two servers out of a dozen to get blocked, while the others have no problem.

The second part of the question then becomes, "why is spam coming from BH mail servers at all?" BH certainly makes it very tough to send out spam, with fairly low limits on outgoing messages. Where they get into trouble is with forwarded email. A BH user has all of the messages addressed to his BH POP account forwarded somewhere else, like his AOL account. BH doesn't screen these messages - they just forward them. So, they end up forwarding all the incoming spam along with the legitimate messages. From AOL's side, they see a flood of spam coming from the server at IP address 69.123.45.92. The fact that the spam isn't originating there is irrelevant.

This is why I wish BH users would just set up an email client program to fetch their messages directly from BH, rather than forwarding it somewhere else. Having the servers periodically blocked by other ISPs is a pain in the butt for the rest of us.

[Barbouille]

Thanks a lot Early Out for the explanation. This sure sheds some light on my question.

Regards

[Maggilove]

This is why I wish BH users would just set up an email client program to fetch their messages directly from BH, rather than forwarding it somewhere else. Having the servers periodically blocked by other ISPs is a pain in the butt for the rest of us.

Couldn't agree more.