Why is DH being blocked by AOL, Comcast?

Lynnwood 2006-08-31 22:22:11 UTC #1

Like lots of folks I have received emails from DH saying that I can no longer forward email addresses to AOL and now Comcast. This is a real pain! The suggested solution of creating a new email address to replace the forwarding removes the entire reason for the forwards: so folks can get emails to their regular email account and not have to deal with a separate email account!

I have read the emails and seen the posts about all that DH is trying to do to get AOL and Comcast not to block forwarded emails but this seems to miss the point. Why is DH being blocked in the first place? What is the source of DH being labeled as a source of spam?

It doesn't make sense to me that the forwarding capability in an of itself is the culprit. It must be that DH is not monitoring well enough if some of their accounts are being used for spam, or else someone is abusing the forwarding feature for spam.

So, instead of DH telling us about what they're doing about forwarding being blocked, I'd like to hear more about what they are doing to prevent their servers from being used as a launch pad for spam!

Please, please try to get a handle on this or I may be driven to find another host! I need to be able to use forwarding responsibly.

matttail 2006-08-31 22:47:58 UTC #2

Let me start by saing that this is acutomer to customer forum. The majority of people here are just customers like your self. If you want to put your message infront of DH staff you should probably put in a 'sigguestion' through the support section of the panel.

The problem with sending E-mails on to AOL is all on AOL. When you forward on E-mails from an account at dreamhost to AOL, and then use AOL's spam filter they don't look at where the E-mail is really coming from - they just see the last server it came from, in this case DH. So you get E-mails from servers all around the world to your DH account, DH forwards them on to AOL and AOL blams DH for sending spam.

AOL also blocks E-mail based solely on the volume of mail coming in. If there's a lot of E-mail coming from one IP, it must be spam! That's of course not true, and part of this issue may fall on DH. Becuase the majority of E-mail from POP/IMAP clients goes out fromteh same IP address. And becuase DH is a large host, that's a lot of non-spam E-mails.

If you're an AOL customer, I'd sigguest that you contact AOL and let them know that you're haivng issues with their spam practices.

I don't know as much about the comcast issue, but from the reports it seem DH can't get ahold of anybody over at comcast to even find out what the issue is.

As far as a new host goes, you may or my not run into the same problems. If it's a smaller host, you may be better off -but when they are blocked they may be less able to deal with the problem. At least with Dreamhost you know they're taking steps to make it better.

--Matttail
art.googlies.net - personal website

haggis 2006-08-31 22:55:36 UTC #3

This bums me out more than even the various performance problems. The ability to set up forwards has been a FUNDAMENTAL advantage of operating a domain for years. For the clubs I support with changeable officers and governors particularly, it's a necessity. Setting up mailboxes and forcing folks who often are barely able to manage their mail client in the first place to download mail from additional accounts is simply a non-starter. This is a crippling blow.

I can't wait to see what happens with all my discussion list subscribers with comcast addresses.

rlparker 2006-09-01 02:30:29 UTC #4

As has been stated in several posts in this forum, and in the Dreamhost status and blog sites, AOL users who forward to their AOL accounts, and then clulessly report that mail as spam is the biggest part of it. Couple that with AOL filters that check the wrong parts of the email header, and you have it in a nutshell.

Another part of it is AOL's "volume" filters/limits that "gag" at the amount of mail coming from shared email servers.

This is an AOL problem; AOL users are the ones who suffer, and they should be screaming bloody murder at AOL for blocking mail they sent or asked to receive.

Dreamhost is doing the right thing. Comcast is still a bit of an unknown problem, but Dreamhost is not the only ones impacted. Just google for "comcast email blocked" and you will begin to understand the extent of Comcast's interfering with their users' mail.

You can. Don't forward unfiltered mail to AOL - Dreamhost is helping you do that by not allowing it.

--rlparker

fribhey 2006-09-01 13:28:58 UTC #5

dreamhost is one of MANY ISPs that are being blocked by comcast and aol. stop using email from crappy services like comcast and aol and use less crappy email from DH and you will be fine.

johngrayson.com
suffocate[us]

snokarver 2006-09-01 15:35:11 UTC #6

stop using email from crappy services like comcast and aol and use less crappy email from DH and you will be fine.

DreamHost emails is less crappy than comcast? Yeah, right. DH email is slow, down, disconnects and has trouble sending. Comcast has been much more reliable lately. I use Comcast's email because I can count on it.

GiraffeDesign.com

fribhey 2006-09-01 15:41:06 UTC #7

i can't argue with that, you got me there

johngrayson.com
suffocate[us]

SetsunaXero 2006-09-01 17:44:10 UTC #8

you sir are a ignorant
dreamhost is NOT and ISP
if anything its a HSP or DSP but thats taken

as far as I'm concered DH's mailing problems started when they let you use your address as your user for login; AOL an ISP should be a last ditch effort for connection to the 'net. Comcast is mearly blocking it's compeditors like their known to do

its a simple matter of AOL being blatenly ignorant to the world around it
and a greedy company trying to wealse more sales by dimishing the QoS of other providers

if you dont beleave me about Comcast google "Comcast - net neutrality"
or take these
http://www.freepress.net/deadend/=neutrality
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality
www.freepress.net/news/17049

so before you go spewing off about how bad things are; read up and find out WHY they're like that
truth is DH is doing alot more to stop spam than any other hosting provider I know of. You dont get to be on the top 25 for nothing.

fribhey 2006-09-01 18:29:24 UTC #9

ignorant? what the hell are you even talking about? do you even know what ignorant means? and did you even read what i wrote? maybe if you had it would have prevented you from looking like a complete moron in your post that rambled on.

i never went off spewing about how bad things are, i simply pointed out how other companies are dealing with the same issues that dreamhost is. i know exactly what comcast and AOL are doing which is why one of my solutions was for people to stop using email from comcast and aol. if you had read my post you would have seen that.

dreamhost being in the top 25 has NOTHING to do with their attempts to block spam and if that's what you truly believe then you are the ignorant one.

johngrayson.com
suffocate[us]

haggis 2006-09-01 18:45:19 UTC #10

I admire DH for all of that. I think DH are swell, actually. That's why it feels to me like they're rolling over and playing dead in the face of idiocy by AOL and Comcast by removing a subsantial feature of hosting a domain: email aliases.

"Create a mailbox for each user" is an answer to a question no one asked.

"Dear Dog Club, I have your breed too! Please add me to your Discussion List."

"Dear dog owner, welcome! I see you are with Comcast. Please configure your mail account to log into this server with this username and password I'm giving you so you can recieve our mail! I will be happy to answer all your questions about using Eudora, Outlook, TheBat, Pegasus, Elm, Pine, Entourage, Mail.app or whatever you might have! Since you'll be contacting me regularly to ask why the mail is not being delivered or seems really slow, you might as well also use me as your personal PC and Internet help desk!"

Scoff all you want - I bet there are others for whom their domains are more organizational than personal and that fictitious exchange will have the ring of truth.

I just had to tell the relatively naive owners of eight different mailing lists to go figure out something on Yahoo or Google Groups - I can no longer support their use of Mailman since multiple members of their lists can no longer receive mail. This may effectively cripple the operation of a board of governors for a non-profit since not all governors will be able to receive the same information (since the list won't deliver to them). Telling them they have to get an additional or different account simply to receive mail from the domain of the organization they manage is unreal (and not going to happen).

What a nightmare.

SetsunaXero 2006-09-01 19:32:01 UTC #11

whoops
sorry
I quoted the wrong person; I ment to get the guy under you. This is what I get for posting right after I wake up eh?

fribhey 2006-09-01 19:39:07 UTC #12

no problem, i was just confused by that.

i agree about thinking the problems with the email started after they tried to swtich the email user log in to the email address.

johngrayson.com
suffocate[us]

SetsunaXero 2006-09-01 20:03:50 UTC #13

I'd feel sorry for any of those poor fools who changed their defualt mail to one thats hosted here; but I don't

what I would like to see from DH to solve this forwarding problems would be to contact other hosting providers and more or less gang rape AOL and Comcast into being more helpfull in this problem.

as for the email problems. I think that if they managed to get people who are having this problem to more activly help in the debugging of the system.
like time, date, login type, auth type and so on
and all that while they have a couple admin checking on which servers show this problems.
but they dont have the man power to do that and can only rely on the considerate users who give usefull error reports.
oh well it should clear up sometime

and unless they disable Yahoo accounts I'll be fine

meshorer 2006-09-01 20:04:26 UTC #14

Ok, so after all the explanations, what do I DO about my comcast isp? ALL of my email comes into my site hosted on Dreamweaver, and all that email gets forwarded through comcast. Please, kindly, I'm no genius, just a confused fool.
Thanks,
Gwen

SetsunaXero 2006-09-01 20:07:15 UTC #15

you could set up a gmail or Yahoo to forward to your comcast if you're realy that heartset on keeping your comcast or AOL

meshorer 2006-09-01 20:16:48 UTC #16

My heart is far from set on keeping comcast, but they are my isp. Again, pardon my ignorance, but they are my isp. Is my only choice to get a yahoo account and have that forwarded? What a pain. Again, thanks.
Gwen

snokarver 2006-09-01 20:22:04 UTC #17

You mean me?

I agree. From what I've read of the CA and Fed laws regarding spam prevention, AOL and Comcast are going overboard.

GiraffeDesign.com

rlparker 2006-09-01 20:27:13 UTC #18

No need to be apologetic, Gwen, as you are asking reasonable questions - as I see the situation, you have several choices:

1) You can "vote with your wallet" and change ISP's to someone other than comcast - This will solve the immediate problem and if everyone would do that Comcast would be "ecouraged" to rethink their handling of all this

2) You could simply utilize a Dreamhost supplied mailbox to catch your mail, and you can retrieve it via a POP/IMAP client, or webmail - some have had difficulty with the sluggishness of webmail, and IMAP, but my experience with Dreamhost mailboxes using POP3 has been satisfactory (I think storing large amounts of email on the server at DH contributes to many users frustration - POP3 keeps the mailbox tidy, and works well for me)

3) As previously suggested, open a Gmail account (or yahoo, etc - though I strongly recommend Gmail because it just works better!) and set your DH addresses to forward to that address.

Most of my clients use suggestion 2 or 3 (or both!), and it seems to work well.

--rlparker

Lynnwood 2006-09-01 20:52:24 UTC #19

I'm with you haggis! Your situation and mine are similar. It's not MY email accounts at AOL or Comcast that are the problem (I've got shed of those kind of email accounts a long time ago) - It's simply hapless members of communities that facilitate.

The folks who are (fairly rudely btw) suggesting that I should "just" get rid of AOL/comcast emails completely miss the point. Am I going to tell folks that to be apart of this on-line community, they have to get rid of an email account that they may have been using for years? That's absurb.

I've heard all the attempts DH is making to fix this problem and it may be/probably is totally reasonable. All the same, this is a real bummer for my ability to support my community and not have to make unreasonable request of my users.

snokarver 2006-09-01 20:53:12 UTC #20

I wish I could do this Comcast is the only affordable broadband supplier in the area. I can't get DSL because I'm too close to the CO - that being it's fiber from the CO to me and they don't want to spend the $$ so I can get DSL off that.

GiraffeDesign.com