Is anyone else noticing new AOL lameness that when you send an e-mail
to an AOL user and if the e-mail has a URL in it but the reverse
lookup of that url doesn't come back to that domain name that AOL's
postmaster rejects it and gives you this URL:
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554hvuip.html
This has to be new policty for them because it never rejected them before...
Ugh.
-Mike
That seems pretty unlikely (as it would break every email mentioning a
virtual hosted website), and the URL you link to says nothing of
the sort (it says "Don't use dotted-quads in URLs unless you want to
look like Atriks, doofus.").
Do you have some data suggesting that this is actually happening?
Cheers,
Steve
OK, I should clarify this. The description that is on that link I put
in my original e-mail doesn't actually describe what is happening, but
that is the error they spit back at me.
What really is happening is that the url that is in my e-mail and when
you reolve it to an IP, if you do a reverse lookup on that IP, it
comes back with a generic DNS entry that my colo provider has assigned
to it. So the issue seems to be that the reverse DNS entry and the
domain name don't match. But this isn't really an issue, a lot of
providers do it this way.
But why is AOL being lame with this?
-Mike
If that's the behaviour you're seeing, and your theory is really the reason
for it... odds are that it's a bug. Happens occasionally.
The folks at AOL are usually pretty helpful - I'd suggest calling their
postmaster group and asking them for help (there's a link for that on
the URL you posted). They're the only ones who can help you diagnose
what's going on further, I suspect.
Cheers,
Steve
Along the lines of "a picture is worth...etc.." an actual example of an e-mail that is sent out generating that error would be very useful.
I'm guessing that, from the page at the URL provided, AOL has decided that banning dotted quads from e-mails will cut down on the spam and phishing scams. They very well might be right.
Mike Lyon wrote:
Drew the attention of a friend at AOL to this and got a reply quoted
below - this was apparently an issue at AOL's end. Thanks to AOL for
quickly acting to fix this.
I've been asked by my friend to post this below
srs
[quote]
We found a problem with the way URL's were being identified and have
undergone steps to correct it. In the interim, the rule change has
been backed out pending further testing. Thanks to all on the list.
[unquote]
Postings on spam-l indicate that AOL had some broken filters that improperly
identified URLS - the intent was to catch URLs of the form
http://2993432234133/some/path/here, but it was also catching some/123423433/here
as well. Whoops. AOL has backed the filter out.
Anybody more familiar with setup at AOL - is this true?
If so you're going to do disservice to the community as in practice this will cause lots of places to go to per-ip virtual hosting and
more ip usage from hosting companies like it was 5-7 years ago when
browsers did not yet support HTTP/1.1
So, to clarify:
The official policy has nothing to do with reverse DNS lookups of URLs.
AOL’s policy prohibits linking of URLs using IP addresses.
The system they used to enforce the policy was/is quirky, as can bee seen here.
...
Drew the attention of a friend at AOL to this and got a reply quoted
below - this was apparently an issue at AOL's end. Thanks to AOL for
quickly acting to fix this.I've been asked by my friend to post this below
srs
[quote]
We found a problem with the way URL's were being identified and have
undergone steps to correct it. In the interim, the rule change has
been backed out pending further testing. Thanks to all on the list.[unquote]
All, this seems seriously NON-lame to me. Of course, testing and fixing
the bug before it was put out there would have been less so. But think
of this! A large company has actually admitted that it was wrong and
backed out a problem! Isn't this what everyone always complains SHOULD
be done? 
Me, I'm always doing it, but that's just 'cause I have to.
I had users that appeared to be getting their email blocked seemingly
because in their sigs, they write their phone number that stupid
IP-Address-Wannabe method, like:
206.555.1212
As an aside, is this something that's the norm in other places, like
commas instead of periods for decimals in other countries? I'd hate to
sound critical if it was. It just seems that I know a large amount of
very American people who have decided that phone numbers with periods in
them somehow look more "hip" than dashes. I despise that. Can you tell?
--Rick Kunkel
All, this seems seriously NON-lame to me. Of course, testing and fixing
the bug before it was put out there would have been less so.
Testing something like this would be difficult without duplicating
everyone's email into a development system (thus possibly opening AOL up
to a bad public relations or security problem). I'm sure that there
were some initial tests. But given the complexity of differing emails it
seems to me it would be hard to robustly test in development alone.
But think
of this! A large company has actually admitted that it was wrong and
backed out a problem! Isn't this what everyone always complains SHOULD
be done?
Kudos to AOL for responding quickly, and for doing this on a Monday
instead of a Friday afternoon.
-Jim P.
Do those people also put "http://" in front of their phone numbers? If
not, then AOL would reject any email containing an IP address in the
message body for any reason.
Kind of stupid if you ask me...I can see maybe boosting a score in
something like SpamAssassin for that, but outright rejection? "Lame"
sounds pretty adept to me.
James Smallacombe PlantageNet, Inc. CEO and Janitor
up@3.am http://3.am
You've never seen anything like
http://foo.example.com * 978-555-1212 * 978-555-2424 (fax) * FooBar Ltd.
in a sig?
Now how about in spam? URLs in spam are often so broken they're unusable
in anything but the most forgiving mail clients, but that doesn't stop
them from being spam, and it doesn't stop others from trying to detect
them despite all their brokenness. Cut AOL some slack - they've been very
responsive whenever I have had trouble with them, and they've been very
responsive this time.
...
Drew the attention of a friend at AOL to this and got a reply quoted
below - this was apparently an issue at AOL's end. Thanks to AOL for
quickly acting to fix this.I've been asked by my friend to post this below
srs
[quote]
We found a problem with the way URL's were being identified and have
undergone steps to correct it. In the interim, the rule change has
been backed out pending further testing. Thanks to all on the list.[unquote]
All, this seems seriously NON-lame to me. Of course, testing and fixing
the bug before it was put out there would have been less so. But think
of this! A large company has actually admitted that it was wrong and
backed out a problem! Isn't this what everyone always complains SHOULD
be done?Me, I'm always doing it, but that's just 'cause I have to.
--
Joe Yao
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This message is not an official statement of OSIS Center policies.I had users that appeared to be getting their email blocked seemingly
because in their sigs, they write their phone number that stupid
IP-Address-Wannabe method, like:206.555.1212
As an aside, is this something that's the norm in other places, like
commas instead of periods for decimals in other countries? I'd hate to
sound critical if it was.
Normal practice in France; Belgium too I think.
Judicious clipping; hope I kept the right attributions...
Ian Mason wrote:
It is indeed happening, and appears to have started last night. And it's
not happening with very great accuracy. A valid mailto URL in a signature
file triggered it, for instance.
-Bill
I remember running across a standards document which defined it once...
ITU, probably. Plus sign, country code, area code, number, space
delimited. I don't have the energy to google (hi, verb-searching IP
lawyers!) for it exhaustively, but here's one reference, third paragraph
down:
http://www.eeicommunications.com/eye/utw/96feb.html
and here's another:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.164
-Bill
Etaoin Shrdlu wrote:
Judicious clipping; hope I kept the right attributions...
Ian Mason wrote:
I had users that appeared to be getting their email blocked seemingly
because in their sigs, they write their phone number that stupid
IP-Address-Wannabe method, like:206.555.1212
Commas in AT commands and on fax machines mean pause. Not sure why space
isn't a good enough separator for phone numbers.
Periods are used as separators for sequences of three numbers
conventionally in most European (ie continental) countries likewise the
comma is used for decimal notation.
ten thousand 10.000
ten and 51 hundredths 10,51
and for good historical measure:
seventeen hundred sixty one M. DCC. LXI.
Dang, I really need to train myself to read _all_ of my email before
replying to _any_ of it.
-Bill