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Neil Anuskiewicz
Asked: 2018-03-04 13:00:54 +0800 CST

AOL soft bounce

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I don’t have much experience dealing with AOL. If someone on a shared IP address at a web hosting service got a bounce like this:

[email protected]
  host mailin-02.mx.aol.com [64.12.88.163]
  SMTP error from remote mail server after initial connection:
  554 mtaig-mcd04.mx.aol.com ESMTP not accepting connections

They opened a ticket to their web host who wrote back that they (the hosting service) isn’t responsible for the IP address, especially “after use,” which seems like a strange response because it’s a shared IP and obviously has been used a lot and still is being used a lot. Anyway, the hosting provider also said the solution was to get on AOL’s white list, sending a link to apply for it. My understanding was that in situations like this the host owns the IP address and just provisions it to one or more customers, and thus it would be the hosting company that would apply for the whitelist?

The IP address isn’t exactly in great shape. It’s on a few blacklists that don’t seem to be the most important blacklists but nevertheless, they’re evidence the IP address isn’t exactly clean: CASA CBL, OSPAM, and SORBS. Anyway, any thoughts on how to resolve this issue with AOL? Is filling out the whitelist form for this shared IP address the best approach as the hosting service’s tech support suggests?

email

1 Answers

  1. Through another source, I found the solution. It turns out that AOL has changed its MX, and the above example was sending via the old mx. The solution was to clear the DNS cache. Here are a couple of AOL blog posts on the changes at AOL:

    • http://postmaster-blog.aol.com/2018/01/29/aols-mx-record

    • http://postmaster-blog.aol.com/2018/02/08/about-dmarc-reporting-and-fbl

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