AOL blocking Gmail

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Jim O'Donnell" <provost () georgetown edu>
Date: April 24, 2006 5:05:08 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: AOL blocking Gmail

Dave, just had a lively and interesting conversation with an AOL
postmaster phone number.  When they get reports from their users of
spam from a given host, they start rate-limiting mail from that
source.  When a given source is huge, it's inevitable that there will
be spam-marked mail from within that space, and even if it's just
amateur users who mark as spam mail that comes to them that they don't
want to see, whether it's spam or not:  with two larger user bases, it
can easily add up to a number of complaints that triggers aol's
mechanism.

So, net result, if you have a gmail account and try to write to
aol.com addresses now, you will probably not get through immediately.
You will probably get a message from google telling you that your
message has been delayed and giving an aol postmaster address,
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/421rlynw.html, that tells you
that your site (i.e., Gmail) is being rate-limited and delayed inbound
to aol.

AOL's response to a complaint is to tell the Gmail user to tell Google
that there's a problem.  Clash of the titans?

Jim O'Donnell


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