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You are here: Home>> Whitelist>> Guidelines
The whitelist is designed to help America Online work with organizations and individuals who send out a high volume of solicited email. Whitelist status protects mail originating from whitelisted IP Addresses from some, but not all, of AOL’s proprietary processes for protecting its Members and its network from unsolicited bulk email (UBE). View America Online's Unsolicited bulk e-mail guidelines. Thus, whitelist status exempts an IP address from certain blocking filters, but does not guarantee delivery of mail originating from such addresses. To participate in the AOL whitelist program, you must adhere to certain technical and other requirements, as stated below.
Technical Requirements
- All e-mail must be RFC compliant. (Refer to http://www.rfc-editor.org)
- All e-mail servers connecting to AOL's mail servers must have valid reverse DNS records.
- All e-mail servers connecting to AOL's mail servers must be secured to prevent unauthorized or anonymous use.
- Direct connections from dynamically assigned IP addresses or residential customers to AOL's mail servers may not be accepted.
- Organizations may not hard code AOL's mx records into their configuration files.
- An organization's mail servers must send a minimum of 100 emails per month to maintain whitelist status.
E-mail Formatting Requirements:
- Email originating from the whitelisted IP Address must be compliant with the federal Can Spam Act of 2003, available at http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html.
- Persons transmitting mail from the whitelisted IP Address must not do anything that tries to hide, forge or misrepresent the sender of the e-mail and sending site of the e-mail.
- Bulk mailings must specifically state how the AOL members' e-mail addresses were obtained and must indicate the frequency of the mailing. Such details as the date and time when the e-mail address was obtained along with the IP address of the subscriber and the web site they visited to sign-up must be made available to AOL upon request.
- Bulk mailings should contain simple and obvious unsubscribe mechanisms. We recommend that this be in the form of a working link to a one-click unsubscribe system; however, a valid "reply to:" address may be used instead.
- All subscription based e-mail must have valid, non-electronic, contact information for the sending organization in the text of each e-mail including phone number and a physical mailing address.
Policy and Procedural Requirements:
- All bulk e-mail to AOL members must be solicited, meaning that the sender has an existing and provable relationship with the e-mail recipient and the recipient has not requested not to receive future mailings from the sender. Documentation of the relationship between the sender and the recipient must be made available to AOL upon request.
- Any e-mail sent to AOL members must conform to AOL's Community Guidelines (http://legal.web.aol.com/aol/aolpol/comguide.html).
- Persons sending bulk mail from the whitelisted IP Address must immediately remove any e-mail address which causes a permanent failure "bounce" message to be generated.
- If a whitelisted IP Address generates member complaints, bounces in excess of 10% of their mail or fails to accept those bounces, the whitelist status may be revoked for that IP Address. A pattern of such abuses common to a single organization may result in the revocation of whitelist status for some or all of that organization’s IP Addresses.
- In no way does the posting of these requirements imply any affiliation, membership, sponsorship or endorsement of business or activities/practices of an organization by AOL.
- Periodic audits of mail, complaint, bounce and bounce acceptance volumes may result in removal of an IP Address or of an organization’s IP Addresses from AOL's whitelist without notice.
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