AOL Email Delivery: Technical Standards

Technical Standards for E-mail Delivery

The following technical requirements apply to the delivery of Internet e-mail through AOL''s e-mail network.

• AOL''s servers will not accept connections from unsecured systems. These include open relays, open proxies, open routers, or any other system that has been determined to be available for unauthorized use.

• AOL''s mail servers will not accept connections from systems that use dynamically assigned or residential IP addresses.

• AOL will not deliver e-mail that contains a hex-encoded Universal Resource Locator (URL). (Ex: http://%6d%6e%3f/)

• AOL''s mail servers will reject connections from any IP address that does not have reverse DNS (a PTR record).

• AOL may reject connections from servers whose recipient lists consistently generate a higher than 10% bounce failure rate. (i.e. over 10% of a sender''s mailing list is destined for users that do not exist on our system)

• AOL may reject connections from senders who are unable to accept at least 90% of the bounce-return messages (mailer-daemon failure/error messages) destined for their systems.

• Complaints submitted by AOL members will be used as a basis for refusing connections from any mail server.

• AOL may provide daily communications to postmaster@domainname and abuse@domainname (or @IP.address if no reverse-DNS or PTR records are present) to senders who may be in violation of AOL''s guidelines.

• America Online, Inc. ("AOL") does not authorize the use of its proprietary computers and computer network ("the AOL Network") to accept, transmit or distribute unsolicited bulk e-mail sent from the Internet to AOL members. Details on AOL''s Unsolicited Bulk E-mail policy can be found at http://www.aol.com/info/bulkemail.adp

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