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Using abuse@aol.com to report spam to AOL


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Hello,

I notice Spamcop uses

abuse [at] aol.com

for reporting spam to AOL.

I thought that address was dead. abuse [at] aol.com bounces when I use it directly. There was some other address like

tosemail1 [at] aol.com

for a while, but that one seemed to go dead to.

What's the current spam reporting address for

AOL?

I did find a couple of good email addresses for reporting software PIRACY spam:

tme [at] redhat.com for Redhat software piracy

spamwatch [at] symantec.com for Norton, etc.

piracy [at] macromedia.com for Macromedia software piracy

piracy [at] microsoft.com

piracy [at] adobe.com

These addresses are live and they are responsive, especially Macromedia. If you use them, please send piracy spam with FULL email headers. ;)

My Macromedia piracy spam stopped for two weeks, after getting several per day. I wonder if the spammers went on holiday?

Be sure to take out the spaces :P

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http://postmaster.aol.com/guidelines/junk.html

Other reporting address, see Marjolien's link in the FAQ-in-progress under "other places"

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Marjolien's link in the FAQ mentions the

tosemail1 [at] aol.com

address to report junk AOL mail.

However, AOL no longer responds to spam sent to that address. What is the CURRENT address for reporting AOL spam? :unsure:

PS: AOL now owns Compuserve, and the abuse[at]cs.com and abuse[at]compuserve.com spam reporting email addresses are BROKEN too.

I belive Marjolien's information is dated, and both AOL and CS have moved on to a third level of reporting addresses.

Here's what AOL says about CS, but try sending to these addresses, and they will bounce:

Since AOL now owns CompuServe, should I send reports of CompuServe Member abuse to AOL too?

Please forward reports of CompuServe member abuse to abuse[at]compuserve.com.

Please forward reports of CS.com member abuse to abuse[at]cs.com

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I'm not sure what you want from me/us .... I went to AOL's web-site, hunted around a bit and found / posted AOL's informational page on how to handle spam ... I don't work for or use AOL, so if AOL's web-page is wrong, you need to take it up with AOL .. Sorry .... Marjolein went to great pains to only post addresses that could be verified by a web-page from the source, so I'll state that she visited the same web page I offered up ...

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I get spam from AOL.

I used to report it to

abuse [at] aol.com

I notice that is the same address that Spamcop uses for reporting AOL spam.

It appears that address is dead. Any reports sent to

abuse [at]aol.com

bounce back as a bad address. Nobody home.

Check it out. When Spamcop sends a spam report to AOL it's sent to

abuse [at]aol.com

So, I went searching for a real spam email address for AOL.

I found

tosemail1 [at]aol.com

This happens to be the same one mentioned in the link you gave me above.

However,

tosemail1 [at]aol.com

appears to be an outdated address as well. spam reports sent there get no reply.

I'm trying to be helpful here as

abuse [at]aol.com

and

tosemail1 [at]aol.com

both appear to be bogus or outdated AOL spam reporting email addresses.

I'm not sure how I can be more clear on this.

I would like to know a verified address for reporting spam to AOL, and I'd like to know that Spamcop is sending spam Reports to a LIVE AOL spam reporting email address.

Nothing personal, but it's an issue if you dig in.

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You may be correct. However, spamcop does have a system where if there are a certain number of bounces from an abuse address, it stops sending and simply adds to the blocklist. If that hasn't happened, then whatever abuse address spamcop is using is not bouncing.

As Wazoo said, if your emails to aol and cs are bouncing, then it is better for you to find out why. (I once had a manual lart bounce. In the Message Source the reason was that my IP address was on SORBS. Actually, it didn't say that, but when I emailed my ISP about what the reject message meant - the answer came back "Caught in spamland' and he said it was SORBS.)

aol has some peculiar filters. Recently an email that I sent to several relatives was rejected by them - I think it was because I used all capitals in the subject and there were five relatives on aol and one on cs. I emailed abuse <at> aol, but naturally did not get an answer. It didn't bounce, though. Some abuse desks bounce attachments.

IOW, the abuse address may be ok except for you. Or if it really isn't, then unless you come up with a new address for them, spamcop will continue sending to the one that does not bounce back to spamcop.

Miss Betsy

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The ever bouncing what's true and whats false.

The following is taken from http://www.dnsreport.com/tools/dnsreport.ch?domain=AOL.COM ascessed through a link at www.spambo.org

PASS Acceptance of abuse address OK: All of your mailservers accept mail to abuse[at]AOL.COM.

Which would seem to say that the address abuse [at] aol.com is a good address, now wether AOL actually does anything with the information is questionable.

I sent an email to abuse [at] aol.com asking what address use and am waiting to see if I get any reply, if I do I will post it.

By the way AOL does NOT bounce messages sent to abuse [at] aol.com

However, AOL no longer responds to spam sent to that address. What is the CURRENT address for reporting AOL spam?

What gives you the impression that AOL would respond to any abuse message regardles of where it was sent?

I have forwarded countless messags to earthlink "junkmail [at] earthlink.net" and never get any response, not that I expect one.

The thing I hate about Earthlink is that they force every user to a two email address which can not be separated and both feed a single inbox. Every Earthlink.net address has a matching Earthlink.com address, which of course the only thing that ever comes to that address is spam. Earthlink uses the lame excuse that some users might make the mistake and use the .com address as that is the "most commonly" used format and our users would not want to miss receiving mail addresses to them at the "wrong" address, so we forward it. So I filter all earthlink.com messages and forward right back to Earthlink automaticly, not that it does any good.

As Wazoo said and this is the link to the AOL site for handling spam. http://postmaster.aol.com/guidelines/junk.html#abuse

The correct address to send spam reports to is

What do I do if I get junk e-mail that appears to be sent by an AOL Member?

You can forward reports of Internet e-mail abuse involving AOL Member accounts to TOSEmail1[at]aol.com.

When reporting junk, abusive or unwanted e-mail from AOL Members, please forward the full text of the message along with the full header information. For any Internet provider to "take action" on an account that is abusing their system, the abuse handler needs to see a forwarded copy of the e-mail along with the full headers, including the "Received" header lines. The full headers help the abuse handler understand the delivery path the junk e-mail has taken.

But I would not expect a reply.

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AOL used to reply to anything sent to abuse [at]aol.com with a stock reply of (paraphrased) "this is no longer the abuse address for AOL".

Abuse [at]cs.com

and

Abuse [at]compuserve.com

just bounce.

I always get a reply from Earthlink.com or Earthlink.net, or even Mindspring.com or Mindspring.net when I send them an email to:

abuse[at]

FYI: Regarding Compuserve, I just sent test emails to [at]cs.com and [at]compuserve.com (abuse [at]) and here's the first reply:

*** ATTENTION ***

Your e-mail is being returned to you because there was a problem with its delivery.  The address which was undeliverable is listed in the section

labeled: "----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----".

The reason your mail is being returned to you is listed in the section

labeled: "----- Transcript of Session Follows -----".

The line beginning with "<<<" describes the specific reason your e-mail could not be delivered.  The next line contains a second error message which is a general translation for other e-mail servers.

Please direct further questions regarding this message to your e-mail administrator.

--AOL Postmaster

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- <abuse[at]cs.com>

----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to air-xg04.mail.aol.com.:

>>> RCPT To:<abuse[at]cs.com>

<<< 550 MAILBOX NOT FOUND

550 <abuse[at]cs.com>... User unknown

So that AOL link is full of prunes regarding how to report Compuserve abuse. :P

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Has anyone checked to see if aol is on the rfcignorant list? Wasn't there a discussion not too long ago about spamcop being on that list because the abuse address sent an automatic message to use another address?

Maybe the 'standard' rfc addresses should be changed from postmaster and abuse to something else to give the abuse desks a break from all the spam! Imagine their problems of finding real messages among the spam!

Not all abuse desks send replies and some that will send a reply to manual larts will not send them to spamcop reports. Perhaps aol can filter out spamcop reports and so does accept them at the old abuse address, but everything else just gets dumped.

It would be nice if you followed through and actually talked to a real person at aol until you found out what abuse is used now.

Miss Betsy

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Has anyone checked to see if aol is on the rfcignorant list?  Wasn't there a discussion not too long ago about spamcop being on that list because the abuse address sent an automatic message to use another address?

Maybe the 'standard' rfc addresses should be changed from postmaster and abuse to something else to give the abuse desks a break from all the spam!  Imagine their problems of finding real messages among the spam!

Not all abuse desks send replies and some that will send a reply to manual larts will not send them to spamcop reports.  Perhaps aol can filter out spamcop reports and so does accept them at the old abuse address, but everything else just gets dumped.

It would be nice if you followed through and actually talked to a real person at aol until you found out what abuse is used now.

Miss Betsy

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AOL would not be added to the list since they do accept all mail addressed to abuse [at] aol.com which is all that is required to stay off that part of the list. There is no requirement to do anything about the mail sent. If the other related domains are bouncing mail sent to the abuse address then they will be eventully added if not already there.

If SpamCop wanted off the list, I guess all they would have to do is start accepting mail at the two address "abuse" and "postmaster" and then simply automaticly trash them. Not as honest as bouncing them, but might be an option.

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I'm done trying to handle this issue ,,, 2.5+ hours on the phone (most of it on hold of course) ... 7 people talked to at AOL ... lemme see, AOL doesn't spam, Compuserve is not AOL, who the hell is SpamCop, AOL doesn't spam, .. on and on .... Each and every person was shocked to see that Compuserve abuse addresses existed on an AOL support web page, though none of them had a clue as to what the connection between AOL and Compuserver could be .... at some point, rambled arounf the house to get to my main system, found that I had no net connection ... jumped over to a couple of other systems .. no net connection ... still talking (holding the phone) with AOL ... had seven dead computers brought to the front door during these phone calls ... thought it was odd that all had blown power supply symptoms, but nothing burned obvious on any of them, but then again, recovering from tornado, wind, and power outage issues .... moving stuff around to figure out which one was going to get hit first ... noticed that all three routers, two hubs showed no activity ... my faithful and ever-loving dog had turned off a power strip for me ... thankfully (?) the first three systems I've re-checked do in fact have dead power supplies, but ... I gave up on getting anywhere with AOL's fine 'customer' service (which of course was another hurdle every time I got sent off to another office) ... just is not worth my time ...

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I'm done trying to handle this issue ... (snip) ... just is not worth my time ...

I don't blame you...it's not referred to as "America On Hold" and other less-complimentary nicknames for nothing! Their official Postmaster website does indeed seem to conflict with itself, in that on this page, it clearly states that "we have replaced the abuse[at]aol.net and abuse[at]aol.com mailboxes with other mailboxes for specific issues" while on this page, under "Please see the following contacts for support," appears: spam / Abuse : abuse[at]aol.com

So, it might be possible that both are valid, as far as they're concerned. The abuse address is indeed listed in the rfc-ignorant list, so that might be a bad sign, and perhaps SC ought to be sending reports to the "tosemail1" address instead.

Many such abuse addresses don't generate any sort of response, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't processed, even if by scripts and automated methods.

dt

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Once upon a time, there was an "inside" guy there that took things to heart ... (Jay comes to mind) .. but that was a few years back, and with all the changes at AOL/Time Warner ... hard to say if anyone from a few years back is still around <g> .. but along that line, Julian had a "special" address for an AOL complaint .. I haven't seen an AOL spam in so long ... so I'm still wondering when that "special" address was changed to plain old abuse <at> aol.com ...

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I haven't seen an AOL spam in so long ...

I wish I could say the same, but in about one out of ten batches of Held Mail that I report, there's at least one report sent to abuse <at> aol.com, so although the number is fairly small, it's still significant.

dt

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