AOL blocking MailScanner messages!

[Desai, Jason]

Does your site-name have any weird characters in it?  Maybe an underscore or
something else?  They could be blocking email based on what they thing is an
invalid header.

Jason

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniel Bird [mailto:dbird at SGHMS.AC.UK]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2003 2:30 PM
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: [MAILSCANNER] AOL blocking MailScanner messages!
>
>
> Dear all,
> Apologies for the shock subject line, but it seems to be the case (at
> least for our site;-).
>
> Recently, we started seeing messages like:
> 2003-12-02 16:09:43 1ARD5c-0002Sm-Rm ** ******@aol.com <*****@aol.com>
> R=dnslookup T=remote_smtp: SMTP error from remote mailer after end of
> data: host mailin-03.mx.aol.com [64.12.137.152]: 554
> TRANSACTION FAILED
> 554 AOL will not accept delivery of this message
>
> in our Exim mail logs
>
> After numerous emails to postmaster at aol.com (all replys were automated
> "sorry for the inconvenience", "read this/that policy" types)
> I ended up
> calling them (at international rates I might add!!!).
>
> The 'helpful' gentleman on the end of the phone suggested turning off
> any scanning software and retrying. Now, all I did was add the line
>
> To:    *@aol.com    no
>
> to /etc/MailScanner/rules/virus.scanning.rules
>
> and restart.
>
> After this change all was well and delivery started. The only
> differences I can think of between the two emails that would have been
> sent would be the omission of the X-MailScanner headers (apart from
> X-MailScanner-<site-name>: not scanned,etc )and a MailScanner
> signature
>
> Looking at the error message they are rejecting on data content after
> the initial SMTP connection so this makes me think (a hunch) they are
> rejecting on X-MailScanner-xxxx : Found to be clean or other
> MailScanner
> headers. (Sobig.F springs to mind!)
>
> Has anyone else noticed this behavior from AOL on their MTA?
>
> I have opened a ticket with their postmaster team to see if I
> can verify
> the above assumptions. In the mean time I've left the virus
> scanning off
> for AOL recipients.
>
> Additionally, if they are blocking on
> "X-MailScanner-<site-name>: Found
> to be clean" I am wondering if it would be possible to customize the
> "found to be clean message" as this would be the value in the
> MailScanner headers from my 4 mail hubs that would be consistent.
>
> Regards
> Dan
>
>
> --
> This message has been scanned for viruses and
> dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
> believed to be clean.
>