Re: *** ADMIN: AOL.COM users no longer allowed to post

On 4/23/2014 8:46 AM, Steve Richter wrote:

what I do not understand is why does the mail sent by a listserv have
to say it is being sent from a yahoo or AOL server? I see that
messages from the midrange.com listserv say they are from the email
account that posted the message to midrange-l. When that message is
broadcast to all the subscribers on the list, the subscribers who are
yahoo or AOL are going to reject those messages because those servers
say the message is not from yahoo or AOL.

The problem isn't specifically that Yahoo & AOL will reject the message (they will), but Yahoo & AOL have published policies that instruct other mail providers to ALSO reject mail that has a yahoo or aol email address and doesn't come from the appropriate server (and doesn't have the correct digital signature).

This means that any message that midrange.com re-sends, that was originally from a yahoo or aol subscriber, will be rejected by Yahoo, AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, & Comcast (probably more) with a hard failure. When this happens, the list software will see the rejection as a bounce and assume the subscribers email address isn't valid or over quota. After 5 days of bounces the subscription will be disabled ... after a period of time the disabled subscribers will be removed.

Is that correct? Can the listserv broadcast the messages posted to
it as from the listserv? That would also solve the problem of a
member of the listserv having their email address broadcast on the
internet everytime they post a message to a discussion group.

This is possible ... and it may come to that. It kind of screws up the interpersonal nature of the mailing lists IMO. I like seeing who a message is from instead of having to guess.

I would prefer that Yahoo & AOL try some other methods first ... try a trowel before using a bulldozer.

They could have set the policy to quarantine instead of reject.

david