This is a new one to me. I never have a problem sending email to AOL accounts. Now, something truly strange is happening. I’m on a Mac TiBook G4, running OS-X Jaguar.
When I send a normal text only email to an AOL member, I get the following message:
Additionally and I feel importantly, there is a .MIME file attached at the bottom, as though I sent a .MIME file and it was rejected by AOL ( a common event. I send a .JPG and it’s converted to a .MIME file and AOL members cannot view the photo ). I’m only sending text. This has never been an issue. Why is my Mac attaching a blank image?
I tried to open said .MIME file, and the computer could not do so. It tried to figure out what software to use to open it. I asked for the files properties and it showed nothing, no info. I’m at a loss here. I can get around it this week, but it’s very odd.
One other thing. I am in a hotel this week, using their free highspeed Internet access. Is it possible that somehow, something is being embedded or ‘added’ to my emails on the way out? Ads or some kind of header that is used to defray the cost of the free Internet access for guests?
Ah, that’s the key! It appears that the IP address of this hotel has been used to send out huge quantities of spam by someone, sometime recently (not necessarily the person who was in your room, just someone using the hotel’s system). The hotel itself may have a PC that’s been hijacked by a spammer, and is pumping out spam without the hotel even being aware of it (a so-called zombie PC).
As a result, the hotel’s IP address has been put on a blacklist, which some ISPs, like AOL, use to block spam. They simply won’t accept any email from that address until the spam problem is addressed by the sending IP.
Since it’s not your computer that’s the problem, there’s very little you can do about it. Perhaps send the message to a friend who is not on AOL, and ask him to forward it for you?
I didn’t think that using POP accounts the hotel’s IP address would even enter into the equation at all, but that the first address in the string of IP addy’s would be your POP3 server’s address. So it’s possible your mail provider’s suddenly been blacklisted.
Or, if I’m wrong, you could try webmail if your mail provider has such an interface. I think, then, that the first IP address will be the webmail servers rather than your own IP address (which is the hotel’s IP address, really).
Balthisar may be correct. I’m just thinking that if I plug a laptop into the hotel’s network, that laptop has to get an IP address from somewhere. However, I believe that he’s correct, in that the IP address from the laptop doesn’t appear in the message header anywhere, so the important IP address would, indeed, be the IP address of the mail server of your ISP.
In any event, the advice to try the webmail interface is a good one, though if your ISP has been blocked by AOL (and I’ve seen it happen before), that still won’t get you around the problem.
The best workaround, guaranteed to get your messages out, is to go to Hotmail or Yahoo and set up a freebies account, and use that for sending messages to AOL clients. It’ll be a PITA having to check two accounts for replies, but it’s better than getting blocked.
If you’ve got Apple’s .mac service, you can access your .mac e-mail account from the internet, then send mail that-a-way. I doubt AOL has Apple pegged as a spammer…
Hi all. Kind of drowned there last week and wasn’t online much after posting that OP. I agree, it’s not my machine. I don’t use .mac mail.
I could access the mail servers over the Internet and send mail to folks that way, I just could not use the Mail software within Mac OS. Odd, but I did follow the suggestions given as to why this might happen. The fact that a blank image was attached to all AOL recipients and therefore had the mail rejected by same, was really bizarre. Anyway, I got through a long wonderful week and had access.
If it’s not your specific email address being blocked, it would pretty much have to be either the SMTP of the ISP domain being blocked or something in the system of the hotel’s network.
The full headers of an email might look something like this:
Status: U
Return-Path: <abcdef@bellatlantic.net>
Received: from out006.verizon.net ([206.46.100.106])
by mx-a065b01.pas.sa.earthlink.net (EarthLink SMTP Server) with ESMTP id 1co4mP2RZ3NZFpK0
for <ahunter3@earthlink.net>; Sat, 30 Oct 2004 18:18:47 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [141.157.199.207] by out006.verizon.net
(InterMail vM.5.01.06.06 201-253-122-130-106-20030910) with ESMTP
id <20041031011847.YBKQ4017.out006.verizon.net@[141.157.194.207]>
for <ahunter3@earthlink.net>; Sat, 30 Oct 2004 20:18:47 -0500
Mime-Version: 1.0
Message-Id: <p06002003bda9edbccd89@[141.157.194.207]>
Reply-to: ahunter3@earthlink.net
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 21:18:43 -0400
To: AHunter3 <ahunter3@earthlink.net>
From: AHunter3 <ahunter3@earthlink.net>
Subject: sample mail
Note the top lines, the ones listing the path the message took in getting to the recipient. The hotel’s server info might appear in one of these even if your ISP lets you utilize their SMTP server from an IP they didn’t issue (POP before SMTP, for example).
