AOL Spam-blocked

[White Haven]

April 26, 2005
AOL lands on spam blacklist
If you're an AOL user and your emails aren't reaching their recipients today, chances are you've been blacklisted.

In response to a handful of recent spam runs, Mail Abuse Prevention Systems (MAPS) has placed a large swath of AOL mail servers on the venerable MAPS Real-time Blackhole List (RBL).

The AOL listing at the MAPS site shows that eight IP ranges have been blacklisted -- affecting many of the systems that deliver AOL members' outbound mail.

According to Kalkea, the company that acquired MAPS last year, the RBL blacklist is used by some of the biggest ISPs in the world, including RoadRunner, USA.net, BT, Telstra -- and AOL itself.

The action by MAPS appears to have been prompted in part by several spam runs somehow relayed through AOL's mailservers on behalf of a pill site named simple-meds.com.

Samples of the spams show they are the work of "Vron," the alias of a prolific spammer who is an affiliate for BlackmarketMoney.com -- the spam affiliate network I wrote about last year for Salon. You can spot Vron's affiliate ID in the URL of the millions of spams he has sent out in the past months.

MAPS' action is bound to generate some complaints, especially since it apparently began blocking AOL's servers less than 24 hours after initially filing a warning to the big ISP.

The rise of MAPS is covered in chapter six of Spam Kings.

[UPDATE: Looks like MAPS changed its mind. As of Tuesday afternoon ET (GMT -4:00), AOL's listing at the MAPS site is gone, and a lookup shows AOL's mail servers no longer seem to be on the MAPS RBL list. No word yet on whether AOL resolved the spam problems, or if MAPS just decided to give AOL more time.]

Sucks to be you

Shame they lifted the listing. That'd be downright HILARIOUS to watch AOL forced to actually do something about the condition of their network.

[phongn]

From what I hear AOL is actually quite good at trying to cut down spam originating from their network and a 24-hour notice only is worthless.