AOL blocked my IP! (warning to all who have AOL)

[Winston]

Lately, all my email recipients with AOL addresses have bounced my posts back! I researched this on google and found some pages where people were saying that AOL sometimes blocks IP's if they think they are spam.

http://www.google.com.ph/search?hl=en&q ... arch&meta=

This article on 60-seconds described it in detail, warning AOL users that they may not be receiving vital email as a result of the IP bans and urging them to just drop AOL:

http://www.60-seconds.com/188_AOL_gone_bad.html

Oh my gosh. The problems with AOL never seem to end. One computer magazine, I was told, cited AOL as being the worst invention ever.

It turns out that it is my IP because all my other email addresses are unable to email those with AOL as well.

What can I do now? If I call AOL Postmaster, they may put me on hold forever while I sit in the call center. I tried using my other email accounts on other ISP's, but still the same. I tried logging into my email from http://www.hidemyass.com and it wouldn't load.

The only way I found, to email those on AOL is by using AOL myself. However, there may be limitations on how many recipients I can send to. So I'll have to try it later. Gmail doesn't have those restrictions, which is why I use them to send posts to my list.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Winston

[sharpbws]

Lately, all my email recipients with AOL addresses have bounced my posts back! I researched this on google and found some pages where people were saying that AOL sometimes blocks IP's if they think they are spam.

Well, at least AOL is showing some degree of good judgement and common sense here.

Seriously, AOL sometimes identifies spam by the size of the distribution list. Maybe reduce your list into two smaller groups and that will help.

[Winston]

Lately, all my email recipients with AOL addresses have bounced my posts back! I researched this on google and found some pages where people were saying that AOL sometimes blocks IP's if they think they are spam.

Well, at least AOL is showing some degree of good judgement and common sense here.

Seriously, AOL sometimes identifies spam by the size of the distribution list. Maybe reduce your list into two smaller groups and that will help.

W: As usual, you don't get it Brad. Look at the article I linked above by "60 seconds". It talks about a lot of businesses losing customers and commerce because AOL blocked them and they can't contact their customers and clients! This is bound to tick off a lot of people and damage AOL badly.

With everyone complaining about how bad AOL is, why haven't they gone out of business long ago?

I just might have to break my list in two right now.

But how do other people send emails to lists? Does using outlook express change things?

Momopi, how do I configure outlook express with my email? Would that help?

I also tried using a proxy but it doesn't seem to work for me. I followed the instructions for using a proxy on firefox that I read on many sites and on youtube videos, but afterward I couldn't access any pages no matter which IP I used! I tried using http://www.hidemyass.com but couldn't log into Gmail from it.

Momopi, how do I use a proxy that works?

[James G]

Once AOL blocks you, well… you are pretty much SOL, not much that you can do

AOL is actually so notorious amongst internet marketers that some won’t even except AOL as an email address for newsletter sign-up’s

One of the reasons why you are getting blocked is because you send out allot of emails – you should cut it down to 1 a week

[momopi]

AOL does have a bulk e-mail filter exemption "white list" but you might not qualify for it:
http://postmaster.aol.com/whitelist/

If AOL is not blocking your sender's address, it's possibly that your e-mail is being redirected to the spam folder.

[Winston]

Hi all,
It turns out that AOL didn't block my IP, but a domain name in my signature, specifically the call russia dot pushline dot com one. I figured it out after trial and error in sending emails to my AOL account.

If I remove that, it goes through to AOL members most of the time, but still has problems, unless I completely take out the signature. Somehow, AOL doesn't like URL's in signatures.

Just to let you know.