Members with AOL E-mail addresses-URGENT

**rolfw** · 12-02-2004

We have a problem at the moment with AOL, they have complained to our server that E-mail from Satellites.co.uk is being treated as SPAM. For this reason, we are going to have to ban AOL addresses, or risk the closure of our server account.

I think everyone on the forum knows that we do not send out SPAM, but we have to take this seriously.

We would ask all members with AOL addresses to change their address on the forum to another, as of the 29th of February, all AOL addresses will be banned from the forum and any member still retaining an AOL address will be be required to change it when they log in.

We regret this action, but cannot afford to be SPAM blacklisted.

As a precaution, all forum E-mail functions will be suspended as of now and will only return after the removal of the AOL accounts, so no post notifications or PM notifications.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

permalink · 13-02-2004

Going to miss you all then as the only email I have is with AOL.

Hope I haven't done it. Get hundreds of spam per week could have been very easy to mark an email from here without knowing.

David

**Channel Hopper** · 13-02-2004

You can (or could) download a free advert version of Eudora (Qualcomm)

Not sure if its still available though

**rolfw** · 13-02-2004

Originally Posted by robbins1940

Going to miss you all then as the only email I have is with AOL.

Hope I haven't done it. Get hundreds of spam per week could have been very easy to mark an email from here without knowing.

David

Just sign up for a free hotmail address David, they cost nothing and you can pick your messages up once a week as webmail, or use outlook express to collect them automatically. You could call it Davidssatellitemail@hotmail.com or something similar and then use message rules to direct it to a satellite posts folder, that's what I do.

It's unfortunate, but we just cannot afford to be blacklisted and whilst stopping all E-mail notification is a quick fix, it is not fair to the members who rely on this facility to keep them informed.

**T_G** · 13-02-2004

I hate AOL! Patronising b*******s!!

**rolfw** · 13-02-2004

Don't praise them up TG.

**PaulR** · 13-02-2004

If I could give a plug for a local free email provider try www.merseymail.com - it doesn't cost anything, has fairly good spam filtering and you get (I think) 4MB of space to fill with messages.

The only downside is that all messages sent out from Merseymail on their free service have an advert for their education courses tacked onto the end. But of course you can still send out on AOL if you want.

PaulR

**rolfw** · 13-02-2004

Sounds like a good one PaulR, there are loads of them about, a Google search for Free webmail will produce dividends.

permalink · 13-02-2004

I signed up to hotmail and it was instantly filled with spam and it wasn't even advertised anywhere.

David

**rolfw** · 13-02-2004

Did you tick the hotmail directory box David? I have 3 hotmail accounts which have never had a drop of SPAM, pick a long name, if you use dave@hotmail.com then you will get a load of spam, if you use daveslittleantispammailbox@hotmail.com and make sure that you are not put in the directory, you will get zip, nothing, nada.

PS. Plus they have anti spam filters, there are also loads of others......Only trying to help, but the truth is, that having members with AOL addresses is going to cost us our server and we cannot afford to lose it.

**jimbo** · 14-02-2004

Put this site's email address into your contacts David and then set 'security' to 'exclusive'. Any spam will be filtered out and you won't need to deal with it.

***Rob*** · 15-02-2004

Have tried to get in touch with AOL trying to find out what is happening; none of the operators seem to know about it (surprise, surprise) and the last number I was passed onto did not answer (well it is Sunday).
Told them that if they are blacklisting the forum, they can stuff my membership were the sun don't shine (that should carry alot of weight).
Mind you I will miss the on-line " bridge games," can someone tell me of another internet supplier who play bridge on-line ?

**rolfw** · 15-02-2004

Don't change your ISP Rob, just get yourself a hotmail address. The only people who will know what's going on is the abuse section and bearing in mind how big AOL is, you are unlikely to get to speak to anyone and even less likely if you do that they will be able to do anything.

The problem that we have and one of the reasons that every now and then we clear out members who have not been on the forum for several months, is that people join the forum with an address, subscribe to forums, but then leave that ISP and don't change their E-mail address, so the ISP receives a constant flow of undeliverable mail.

**redrooster** · 16-02-2004

I just changed my email address to hotmail from AOL but can you give me this site's email address so that I can put it in the contacts under exclusive. I can't seem to find it !

Thanks

Nige

Originally Posted by jimbo

Put this site's email address into your contacts David and then set 'security' to 'exclusive'. Any spam will be filtered out and you won't need to deal with it.

**rolfw** · 16-02-2004

I think that it comes through as Satellite TV Discussion Forum Mailer [chris@astra-systems.com], if it is anything different, Chris will clear it up. There won't be any E-mails until after the 29th anyway, so you have a little time.

**rolfw** · 09-03-2004

All AOL accounts that haven't been changed have now been removed, only way it could be done with the vBulletin software. Sorry to anyone who has lost their membership, but there was ample warning.

**Channel Hopper** · 09-03-2004

So how many does that leave ?

**rolfw** · 09-03-2004

I removed 295 members tonight, one at a time I might add, suffering from RPI, as every deletion takes several selections.

Only leaves 11 to 12,000 members remaining.

**PaulR** · 10-03-2004

And you can name each and every one us no doubt...

PaulR

**rolfw** · 10-03-2004

LOL, my hand and wrist can.

permalink · 11-03-2004

I've used the mail feature at www.yahoo.co.uk which is very similar to Hotmail but has far fewer problems.

**rolfw** · 11-03-2004

Yes, Hotmail can be a pain sometimes, but it does have the advantage of collection by Outlook Express.

BallymunTrev · 01-07-2004

Hotmail, MSN and AOL (AOL you already know of) are cracking down on Spam, but, it seems particular to "spam" that comes from automated Content Managment Systems (like phpNuke, phpBB and Vbulletin). I've heard tons and tons of stuff from people and from people running hosting services that the above 3 are just completely banning emails to them that come from CMS type systems. I've been experiencing it for the last week or so on my own site, un-routable emails due to MSN, Hotmail and AOL filtering phpnuke and phpBB strings and now they've blocked the host I'm with

**rolfw** · 01-07-2004

Yes, there are certainly problems, doesn't strangely enough stop the flood of viagra and enlargement mail though.

I guess that with Hotmail, a large proportion of their mail throughput will be from forum generated mail and blocking this will ease the load on their servers.

**jimbo** · 01-07-2004

Forums are their own worst enemies. Mass mailing info on stuff to a member base where 95% are not interested. Then there's subscribing to individual threads resulting in an email every time someone adds a comment. I see that as pointless but it's a personal opinion as always.

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