Tom Neff asked,
| Is anyone else starting to see bounces of the form
|
| ... while talking to air-xj05.mail.aol.com.:
| >>> RCPT To:<SomeMember@aol.com>
| <<< 550 SomeMember IS NOT ACCEPTING MAIL FROM THIS SENDER
| 550 <SomeMember@aol.com>... User unknown
I was seeing those in the mid-1990s.
| I have started to see more and more of these, and I find myself wondering
| whether AOL members (and possibly on other services) are using the
| ever-expanding "spam blocking" facilities as a shortcut to leave lists,
| rather than figure out how to do it at the listserv level.
Sometimes it's that. But there's also a setting to block all mail from
outside AOL. A blanket block on all mail from outside AOL, last I knew,
generated the same "NOT ACCEPTING MAIL FROM THIS SENDER" response as a block
against the sender's specific address. Some of the time an AOL customer will
get convinced that the surest way to block spam and infections is to refuse
all mail from outside AOL.
Often the user is a minor on a subsidiary screen name of a parent's account,
and parent blocks all mail from outside AOL, usually, I've found, without
saying anything to the offspring, who is just left baffled when mailing lists
dry up and pen pals don't write, and who sends "What happened to my
subscription?" queries, which the list manager cannot answer because mail from
outside AOL is blocked. It's rumored that there are parenting fora on AOL
that advise not only blocking outside mail to one's children's screen names
but also not telling one's children about the block. Sometimes, though, the
child does find out, either because parents brag to the child about what good
protectors they are; or a blocked correspondent knows the child off-line and
asks what is going on.
Unfortunately, nothing stops the users behind these (self-imposed or
parentally imposed) blocks from sending mail anywhere else, and it's quite
common for them to block their incoming mail without realizing what they're
doing, or to be unaware that their parents blocked it, and then to keep
sending complaints about not getting mail, which, of course, the recipient
cannot answer.
So you can't always assume that it's a substitute for a proper unsubscribe.
I had one case where definitely it was: I was maintaining the list's
membership rolls manually, and when I got an unsub request I processed it and
sent an acknowledgment to the former list member. It was rejected as above;
the jerk was so sure I'd disregard his request and keep sending him the list.
I wrote to him from another address (that message didn't bounce but he never
answered it) telling him that of course I had unsubbed him and that his
distrust was highly insulting.
Angel wrote,
> More than
> likely the user went away or deleted that profile and created another one.
No, that's not it. If the screen name has been deleted or the account closed,
you get a different message. I don't remember it, but it isn't "not accepting
mail from this sender."
Follow-Ups:
References:
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