I am actually glad to see this "issue" getting some focus. To address a few issues that have been brought up:
hostultra said:
AOL *incorrectly* detects forwarded spam as originating from the forwarding server instead of the real spammer.
Spamcop correctly detects forwarded spam, and only complains to the isp of the spammer.
I may be wrong in regards to this, but I don't believe Spamcop does any type of real time blacklisting or real time identifying of spam messages. Spamcop works by accepting the full message, all of the headers, then examining the message and adding the original source to its RBL list. AOL (and other 3rd party e-mail services) block messages in a more real-time structure. A message is sent to their system, they identify it as spam using some arbitrary method, and then block the server that was responsible for sending them the message (in the case of forwarded e-mails, your server). I'm not entirely sure how Spamcop works, but I'm thinking there may be some type of human element there that is able to correctly identify the original source, whereas AOL does not (and probably cannot) employ such a function.
PWSowner said:
They use the webmail and in not allowing forwarders, they have to log in to multiple webmail programs which they don't want to do, hence the forwarding.
There is nothing wrong with forwarding e-mails within your own domain or even the same server. This forwarding issue just applies when e-mails are forwarded off of the server. For example, if a customers wants to receive e-mail at
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected], they can set this up so that one of those accounts is a POP/IMAP account, for argument's sake say
[email protected] is setup as a POP/IMAP account. Then just forward
[email protected] and
[email protected] to
[email protected] This way, the user only has to log into the
[email protected] e-mail account through webmail and they would have mail that is sent to
[email protected],
[email protected], and
[email protected]
Further, if these individuals do not like the webmail interfaces that are offered in CPanel, and wish to stick with their hotmail.com or yahoo.com interface, then they really just need to be using their @hotmail.com or @yahoo.com e-mail address when they tell people to write them. If they don't like that, then tough. Its just not possible to make everyone happy, and individuals need to realize this.
It should also be noted, that I'm not really complaining about AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, and other 3rd party mail services and their anti-spam policies. They have to protect their clients as well. I do believe that AOL's tactics may be a little too much, this is just something that is between them and their clients. The issue with these services blocking servers because of forwarded e-mails, is not really their fault, its really more the fault of end users and having to forward their mail to these services. I just don't think end users can fully understand the situation and what is going on, and why forwarding mail to these services is such a bad idea. And so far, I haven't been able to come up with an explanation that end users can fully understand. The way that I describe the problem, and the way other users here are describing this problem, I can understand, but trying to convey that message to end users is not that simple.
There is another thread that is somewhat on this topic at:
http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread.php?t=52910
I don't want to go too much off topic in this thread, but I am paying close attention to both of these threads. I am interested in seeing how the webhosting community reacts to this issue and whether or not disallowing e-mail forwarders will become a viable option. Personally, that is where I believe it will eventually go, I'm just not sure how soon we can expect it to really hit mainstream. But again, that's a topic of discussion in the other thread, and I don't want to take this thread off topic.