[Coco] AOL is bouncing

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Sun, 2005-07-31 at 11:31 -0400, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Mailman has started getting bounces from AOL subscribers and disabling
> them. Six of them just now.
> 
> If anybody has AOL and is getting this, do you know what's happening and
> how to fix it?
> 
> Thanks,
> Dennis
> 
> 
> 
> 

I think James might be right right. AOL is participating in Microsoft's
strongarm effort to try to force everyone on the Internet into
publishing SPF DNS records . SPF breaks mail forwarding services like
pobox.com so I don't like it much. It breaks me running my own MTA from
an arbitrary IP address. It's not a standard.

http://postmaster.aol.com/spf/details.html

I'd suggest not playing and let AOL get complaints. But technically
speaking anyone can publish an SPF record and there's nothing wrong with
that in and of itself. The problem is 800-lb Gorillas using SPF to build
their whitelist. They are breaking the email system IMO.

SPF is NOT an internet standard, There are RFCs released marked
Experimental, so that means AOL is abusing the system to use it in this
way.

http://www.circleid.com/article/1128_0_1_0_C/
http://www.messagingpipeline.com/news/47205098

-- John.