[Mailman-Users] Dealing with AOL rejects

[Brad Knowles]

At 6:41 PM -0400 2004/06/01, Speedy Gonzalis wrote:

>  As you probably know, AOL (in it's infinite wisdom) has given it's users
>  the ability to black list anyone they want.

	Yup.

>                                               Unfortunately, when they do
>  and a black listed individual posts to a list that is set for replies to
>  go to the list, the resulting bounce (example below) is unrecognized by
>  Mailman.

	Sadly, this is true.  AOL wrote their own custom MTA (against my 
vehement objections), and they generate their own bounces in their 
own format.  There's not much we can do about that except deal with 
it.

>  What I'm hoping for is that someone has written, or I can (with
>  assistance) write something that will recognize these rejects and track
>  them against the offending AOL member just as any other hard bounce.

	I don't think that's going to be very likely.  The problem is the 
lack of information provided in the bounce.  You can tell that you've 
got a bounce, but that's about it.  If you go to full personalization 
with VERP, you've got a better shot of figuring out which user 
actually resulted in the bounce and then unsubscribing them (or 
whatever), but that's about the best you can hope for.

	That is, unless you can show us additional information that you 
usually see in your bounces that could be put to use?


	If you need further help, Carl Hutzler <cdhutzler at aol.com> is the 
guy to talk to.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.