Last Updated on December 3, 2019 by Christopher G Mendla
First of all, if you are still using AOL for your business, you want to go out and get a real email, preferably one that goes with your domain. If you can’t do that, at least try gmail.
I’ve been sending some things to friends and clients. I took a look through my incoming emails and looked at the bounced message details. Everything going to anyone with and AOHELL.. er I mean AOL email is bouncing. What happens is that residential FIOS gives you a dynamic IP address. AOL’s spam reporting is based on IP addresses. This means you are getting an new IP address about once a week. You are, in effect, getting someone else’s history.
There are a couple of ways that an IP can be considered tainted by the geniuses at AOL.:
- The AOL users just click SPAM instead of delete for non spam messages. Believe me, there are a lot of clueless AOL users who will do that.
- Someone was really using the IP to send spam
- A clueless user who had the IP previously had a machine full of trojans and bots that was sending out spam without their knowing
So, when your dynamic FIOS IP changes, you can suddenly find that none of your emails are going out. The think that I don’t understand is that I’m not using verizon’s SMTP to send email, I’m using the email server from my domain. However, the return email from AOL is pointing to Verizon’s IP, not mine as the problem.
So, what can I do about this??
- Try to get friends, clients and associates to get off AOL. Unfortunately that isn’t always possible.
- Try to remember to send important emails to AOHELL users using Gmail. I have that set up as an account in outlook. I’m guessing that I might have better luck with Gmail but I’m not sure.
- I can upgrade my FIOS to a dedicated IP. I’m not sure what that would cost but my guess is that it’s not worth it just to reach folks who are stuck in AOL-Land