As per AOLs request of us, all forwards from DreamHost-hosted addresses to AOL accounts will be disabled in one week, on Tuesday, August 29th.
Some background on the problem: Weve been having intermittent problems with automated AOL volume and spam blocks since February, after our mail system was load-balanced. Weve also grown a great deal during this time, which has added to the general mail volume passing through our servers and contributed to the problem. The load-balancing served well to even out internal server loads and mail queues, but has not worked out so well for our external relationship with other mail providers like AOL, since we now have more machines connecting on fewer IPs.
To address spam complaints, we set up a feedback loop with AOL that sends any emails generating spam complaints back to us. The servers that send original mail receive generally 0-2 complaints per day, while the MX servers (that receive mail, and only send for forwards/autoresponders/bounces) are getting 10-30+ complaints each. Looking at the individual complaints: almost all of it is due to forwarded mail.
Complaints from forwarded mail happen when someone sends mail to a DreamHost-hosted email address, which in turn is set up to forward mail to an AOL address, and the recipient on AOLs end clicks This is Spam. AOL counts this as a complaint against us, even though the mail just passed through our system and did not originate with us. Weve been trying to address this by warning and disabling AOL forwards for individual accounts as appropriate, but at this point, this is getting impractical to deal with, and were not seeing any less AOL complaints despite the effort (because new ones continue to be added).
Weve called AOLs postmaster helpdesk numerous times since February and are only able to reach their first level technicians who ask us to either a) submit another whitelist request, or b) write an email, and then c) call back later. Emails directly to the postmaster and whitelist requests explaining how our mail system works and asking for clarification on their policies regarding forwaded mail have been ignored or replied to with a form email that did not answer the questions asked. Essentially, were unable to get an actual human response from whomever is making the decisions over there.
In my most recent conversation with an AOL representative on the phone I was told directly that we should disable AOL forwards, as they will not be whitelisting our IPs while they are generating complaints, and they will not be changing their complaint logic to only target the original spammers.
We regret that we have to make this change and its something that weve been trying to avoid, but we cant continue to allow our customers who are trying to send new mail to have problems due to these forwards, and we cant continue spending copious man hours attempting to manage a problem caused by a single ISP, no matter how large they may be. Finally, AOLs own representative has asked that we stop forwarding mail to AOL it cant get much simpler than that.
For people who have AOL forwards set up, we recommend that you remove them yourself and point them at a non-blocking provider that still offers spam filtering (like GMail) or have it go to a local DreamHost user where it can be downloaded via an email client or checked via webmail. You can edit the destination of an email address by going to Mail -> Manage Email on the left-hand side in the DreamHost control panel, and click on Edit next to the email address in question. If you have difficulty with this, please contact support.
Next week, for those addresses that dont have an alternate recipient other than an AOL forward, we will create a local email account for mail to be routed to, so that nothing is lost.
