emails from aol.com being blocked by talktalk

[CatieE]

From about 11 June 2023, emails to my talktalk email address from aol.com users have been bounced back to the sender with the message:

Sorry, we were unable to deliver your message to the following address.

xxxxxxxxxx

552: 5.2.0 CIpHqvdEkgTAUCIpHq20jV Content rejected (TT992)

Are others having this problem and is there a solution?

[CatieE]

Thanks again Gondola. I set up an aol account and sent myself an email, and as you said, aol messages are now getting through. Let's hope that is the end of it! Have a good week end.

[CatieE]

Thank you Gondola for your help. I apologise for not knowing that you are an independent volunteer and I much appreciate your doing the research to explain what was going on. I only wish talktalk technical support was as well informed as you are. Thanks again, the problem seems to have resolved itself.

[Gondola]

Please ask your contacts to try again sending from AoL.  Our very alert membership have noted that AoL mail is being received again. I've just tested here and mail received from a different AoL IP address 66.163.189.31 and whilst still listed by SORBS SPAM is not listed by 0SPAM. Looks like the hard block had had the desired result of forcing AoL to suppress the previous IP address that triggered a spam trap listing. 

Don't forget to let us know if you're now receiving AoL Mail.

[Gondola]

I'm not employed by TalkTalk. I'm an independent volunteer to this Community that exists to provide member to member advice.  One of our members flagged up that AoL mail wasn't being received. I checked that out and after a second check found that AoL mail was being rejected as spam and that AoL senders were on independent agency blacklists because of sending spam. I've alerted TalkTalk.

The TalkTalk Mail platform deals with spam sending in exactly the same way as Gmail and Verizon Media Mail that includes Yahoo Mail and AoL Mail. So, if AoL doesn't stop spam at source and gets blacklisted by independent agencies then recipient mail services have every right to protect all users from spam by blocking such mail. Yes that will affect genuine users but that's the penalty for using a mail service that allows spam.

It's up to AoL to stop any AoL user sending spam and AoL responsibility to get their mail senders removed from blacklists. The problem is not of TalkTalk's making.

I've given you advice. Feel free to complain but make that complaint to AoL and their parent Verizon Media.

[Gliwmaeden2]

@CatieE, employees of Talktalk will have -Talktalk indicated after their name. 

Community Stars are fellow customers, so like yourself, who give of their time and specific experience to help on this forum.

There's no professional help on here at weekends. Staff respond Monday to Friday during the day. 

[CatieE]

Thank you for the explanation - I assume you are writing as a Talktalk employee. I must protest that the blocking of emails from aol.com, unannounced as far as I can tell, has caused me hours of frustration, colleagues being unable to send me vital information, family and friends no longer in touch. I spent much of yesterday talking to various people in your call centres overseas who had no idea why aol emails were bouncing. They pointlessly took me through all my settings, which I had not touched. I even spoke to the supervisor in technical support who said she was escalating the complaint to some higher level, when all the time the problem was of talktalk's own making. Why is it that even your own technical support team knew nothing about it?  To suggest that perfectly legitimate aol customers should use a different email address is absurd. There must be thousands of other people just as confused as I was.

[Gondola]

TalkTalk are blocking the AoL mail senders because those mail senders have been sending spam and are on spam blocklists. We're obviously aware that most AoL users are genuine and don't send spam. However, just in case some user has had their email hacked it would be good for all AoL users to scan their email devices for virus and malware and if anything suspicious is found to change and upgrade their password as a precaution. 

The current workaround is to ask your AoL contacts to use a different email service to send you mail. Your AoL contacts will receive your mail but will not be able to reply directly via AoL.

We hope TalkTalk will be able to relax the block but this is unlikely to happen until next week.