AOL Blocking E-Mail From Some Pacific Bell Customers

Internet service giant America Online Inc. is blocking electronic mail sent from some Pacific Bell Internet customers as part of its fight against junk e-mail, a move that has left unwitting PacBell customers shipping e-mail into AOL oblivion for more than a week.

Both companies maintain that only a “handful” of Californians have been affected--although neither would provide a figure--and that the problem most likely rests with how individual users have set up their e-mail. PacBell said it is fixing the problem customer by customer.

“I can assure you that there is no wholesale blocking of Pacific Bell mail,” said Rodd Aubrey, a spokesman for PacBell Internet. “In some cases, it was a configuration problem, but clearly there are other problems out there and we are going to address them.”

For PacBell’s 650,000 Internet customers, however, the short-circuit with AOL is the latest in a string of technical problems that have plagued the phone company’s fast-growing Internet access service.

AOL, which has more than 22 million users, said it flags e-mail that has characteristics of being junk mail, or spam, and then discards it without letting the sender know that the mail was not delivered.

Any combination of traits can cause the company to block certain e-mail, but AOL does not disclose the characteristics that it watches for, said company spokeswoman Tricia Primrose.

In the PacBell case, Primrose said the mail could have been blocked if it was labeled as not coming from a “mail” server with a fixed address (such as mail.pacbell.net)--a ploy often used by spammers to make their mail harder to trace.

Steve Gilbert, for one, isn’t convinced by the explanations from AOL and PacBell--that is, that he must have changed his own e-mail configuration (from PacBell’s mail server) to inadvertently give his messages spam-like traits, which in turn triggered AOL to block the mail from delivery.

Gilbert, a computer science instructor at Costa Mesa’s Orange Coast College, said he was unaware until 10 days ago that his e-mail to students with AOL accounts was being blocked. He found out when the students complained that he had not been answering their e-mailed questions.

“The problem can’t be on my end. I haven’t changed any configuration, and I wouldn’t know how either,” said Gilbert, who has used PacBell e-mail for more than a year. “I certainly don’t do any bulk mailing. . . . I’m a lowly consumer who just wants to see that my mail goes through.”

Vicki Greenleaf had the same reaction. Greenleaf runs her boutique public relations and marketing firm from her home, where she uses PacBell Internet service.

About a week ago, clients started telling her they were not receiving her e-mails. “This is a big business problem for me and it can be very embarrassing,” said Greenleaf. “How many people aren’t even aware that this is happening?”

Neither company could adequately explain why only PacBell customers have been hit by the AOL blocking, or why the problem would suddenly hit customers who have made no changes to their computer systems.

In fact, the companies at times have seemed confused about the problem and its cause.

While PacBell and AOL representatives were assuring reporters that the problem was a limited one, PacBell’s own “system status” Web page carried a note Friday saying, “Our customers cannot send mail to AOL customers. . . . This is an issue the PBI cannot fix as AOL is blocking the PBI mail.”

Later, PacBell added a note saying the glitch involves a small number of “configuration” issues. Later still, all mention of the AOL incident had been removed.

By late Friday, PacBell said the e-mail glitch could be caused by other factors, such as a change in the “rule set” used by AOL to determine which mail should be blocked.

“There have been times when that kind of issue has come up, not just with AOL but with other Internet service providers too,” said Dan Hernandez, a vice president with SBC Internet, an affiliate of PacBell Internet. “AOL has said they haven’t made any changes, but we’re working with AOL and the individual cases to see if we can pinpoint a trend.”