Are you having trouble sending emails to AOL recipients on the following domain names?
aol.com
love.com
ygm.com
games.com
wow.com
This is most likely due to the fact that your sending IP address is blacklisted on AOL’s private RBL.
Here are the steps you should be taking in order to get your IP address removed from the AOL blacklist.
1. Before you begin any sort of delisting process, you should investigate the root cause of why you got blacklisted in the first place.
- check if your server may have been compromised and is sending out spam emails
- check if you have vulnerable scripts on your server (i.e.: outdated/unpatched wordpress installation) that may have been compromised
- check if your server has an open SMTP relay, which is being used to send spam emails
2. When you do find the issue that has gotten you blacklisted, be sure to fully patch and solve it completely before proceeding with delisting requests. This is extremely important, because if you do not solve the issue, then you will only get blacklisted again, and even more concerning is the fact that some blacklists will not tolerate repeated offenses, so you may end up permanently blacklisted.
3. Once the issue that got you blacklisted is solved, you should run a Blacklist Check and see if your IP addresses and sending domains/hostnames are blacklisted on any of the public blacklists, and if they are, then you should request delisting from those places first before proceeding with the delist request from AOL. This must be done in order to “clean” the reputation of your IP addresses and domains/hostnames, since having a bad reputation may end up hurting your case when requesting delisting from the AOL blacklist.
4. Now that you have cleaned your IP address reputation, you can proceed with the AOL delisting request:
- First check your IP address reputation on the AOL Postmaster website:
https://postmaster.aol.com/ip-reputation - If the IP address has a bad reputation, you will need to follow the AOL Best Practices in order to improve the IP’s reputation:
https://postmaster.aol.com/best-practices - Once you have done all of the above, you can submit a ticket for the AOL support to look at your case:
https://postmaster.aol.com/dyn-ticket
You will need to fill in your Name, phone number, email address, your mailing IP ranges, and a short description where you should explain what steps you have taken in order to prevent any future spam emails from being sent out from your IP addresses.
5. (optional) It’s always a good idea to keep monitoring your IP addresses against the most popular public RBLs, because if you get blacklisted on any of these, then it’s a big sign of concern and you will most likely get blacklisted on AOL as well if you do not fix the issue in time. You should take immediate steps to de-escalate the situation, once you see that you are getting blacklisted on the public RBLs in order to avoid being blacklisted by some of the other private RBLs, such as the AOL blacklist.