AOL Rejecting Mail due to DMARC policy

AOL (America OnLine) has updated its email policy to reject mail that does not adhere to DMARC policy. This means that “Mail sent on behalf of AOL Mail users to DMARC-compliant domains will be rejected by those domains unless the mail passes SPF and/or DKIM authentication checks AND the domain(s) used in those checks match aol.com.” Read more in their official posts.

Why did they do this?

This helps avoid a situation where someone is spoofing an email address. ‘Sender Address Forgery’, aka ‘Spoofing’, is a method of sending email out while pretending to be from a different sender. It is much like a stranger sending a letter to someone while placing your information as the return address on the envelope. This way it appears to have been sent from you and not the actual sender.

What is DMARC

DMARC is short for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance, and is a way of verifying that messages are actually coming from the listed sender and allows abusive messages to be tracked with more ease. “DMARC standardizes how email receivers perform email authentication using the well-known SPF and DKIM mechanisms.” Read more about SPF and Domain keys in our full guide.

Who does this affect?

If you are using an AOL address to communicate with email servers using DMARC policies, your email may get rejected, or flagged as spam. This can be an issue since many email servers (such as AOL, Gmail, Yahoo, Comcast) use and contribute to DMARC.

What can I do?

  • If you are sending from an @aol.com address, use AOL’s Email Settings to authenticate with their server.
  • Send from your domain instead, using your email settings.
  • For mailing lists we recommend configuring reply behavior to fill the From line with the mailing list’s address rather than the sender’s and put the actual user / sender address into the Reply-To: line.
  • For website operators with ‘share from email’ functionality, please consider using an email address from your own domain as the From address and populate the Reply-To: line with the address of the person sharing.
JB
John-Paul Briones Content Writer II

John-Paul is an Electronics Engineer that spent most of his career in IT. He has been a Technical Writer for InMotion since 2013.

More Articles by John-Paul

8 thoughts on “AOL Rejecting Mail due to DMARC policy

  1. we are getting a return mail:

     

    This is the mail system at host smtp39.relay.iad3a.emailsrvr.com.

     

    I’m sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be delivered to one or more recipients. It’s attached below.

     

    For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

     

    If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the attached returned message.

     

    The mail system

     

    <user@mydomain> <mailto:[email protected]> : host mx1.emailsrvr.com[173.203.187.1] said: 550 5.7.1 Email rejected per DMARC policy for recipientdomain.com (G15) (in reply to end of DATA command)

     why its getting returned please let me know the solution 

  2. -mail sent to aol address is bouncing back with the following error message:

    This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.A message that you sent has not yet been delivered to one or more of its recipients after more than 48 hours on the queue on biz214.inmotionhosting.com.The message identifier is: 1eHD9j-000Kcr-NHThe date of the message is: Tue, 21 Nov 2017 10:14:33 -0800The subject of the message is: RE: Re More Photos for Web Site on the way…..The address to which the message has not yet been delivered is: patty*****@aol.com host mailin-03.mx.aol.com [152.163.0.67] Delay reason: SMTP error from remote mail server after initial connection: 421 mtaig-laa03.mx.aol.com Service unavailable – try again later No action is required on your part. Delivery attempts will continue for some time, and this warning may be repeated at intervals if the message remains undelivered. Eventually the mail delivery software will give up, and when that happens, the message will be returned to you.

    1. Your bounce states the following: “421 mtaig-laa03.mx.aol.com Service unavailable – try again later No action is required on your part. ”

      This indicates the email is being delivered to the recipient server successfully, but AOL’s service is unavailable. Typically, the AOL server will re-attempt delivery, and the email will be delivered successfully when their service is available again.

      If the email delivery “fails” it will be returned or bounced, we have a helpful guide on what to do if an email is returned.

      Thank you,
      John-Paul

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