Re: AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Carl Hutzler <cdhutzler () aol com>
Date: September 19, 2007 8:21:44 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:    AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of  
Truthout

Dave -

Sent this a few days ago and did not see it get posted. But it could  
be an issue on my end. So if you have posted it, just ignore. If you  
did not post and think it adds value, please post.

Thank you,
Carl Hutzler

_________________




For IP...

While I don't work at AOL anymore, I did run the anti-spam team for many
years and worked on the email platform for almost a decade. I can tell
you that from time to time we had a group complain that we were blocking
their mail without proper cause. In most cases we would provide the data
to show the organization why they were having issues. Most of the time
it was a combination of complaints about their mail (REPORT SPAM from
members) along with an abnormally high rate of bounced mail
(non-deliverable addresses). And in most cases the organization would
fix the issue once we got them signed up for a feedback loop which would
allow them to see their complaints and address the cause.

In all of my years at AOL, I can tell you that AOL never intentionally
blocked an organization for their political views. I would not have
allowed it. But we did block some of these political groups along the  
way...

I remember AOL automatically blocked the DNC and RNC repeatedly in
election years for bad complaint rates and high bounce rates. Eventually
these groups even told us that they bought "lists of likely voters" and
emailed them. And as such, complaint rates and bounces were off the
charts. And I remember having blocking issues with Moveon.org as well,
at least once. These were not issues with the organization and what they
stood for. The issues were due to mailing practices and the resulting
poor statistics that the organizations had in our spam control systems.

Over the years we heard lots of excuses for why an inherently political
organization should never be blocked and should always have their mail
delivered, but we always felt that our thresholds should apply equally
to everyone. Unlike some ISPs, AOL always used objective statistics to
block or filter mail. We found we could not reliably do it any other
way. And unlike other ISPs, AOL is fairly easy to get on the phone and
we were always willing to investigate the possibility of special
circumstances affecting our stats - like people trying to game the
system, etc. And we did investigations into these claims many times a  
year.

For example, I remember being told by a number of political
organizations that their spam complaint numbers were up because people
were intentionally signing up for the newsletters and then complaining
to make a political statement against the organization and hopefully get
their mail blocked. But we found that this was not the case and in fact
that the list management policies and poorly run unconfirmed optin forms
were to blame in many cases. In other cases, we found that the "sign up
your friend" system was not working to their benefit. After suggesting
to these organizations that there may be reasons (within their control)
for their poor stats and high bounce rates, many times they would
publish nasty "call to arms" to get their community up in arms and put
pressure on AOL. Sometimes this worked. Sometimes it didn't.

I am not sure what the story is with the TruthOut.org story as I don't
work at AOL anymore. But seeing that not one, but two ISPs are blocking
them makes me consider that something else may be at play other than the
ultra-conservative corporate thieves at AOL and MSFT working together
late into the night, sharing IP block lists for Truthout.org's outbound
servers.

(For my part, I did pass along the original post on this list to the
appropriate people at AOL and I can only assume they are aware of the
issue and working it...business as usual)

Carl Hutzler

http://carlhutzler.com/blog/
cdh () carlhutzler com



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