Email forwarding is allowed however there are restrictions. At this time we do not permit forwarding mail to AOL mail accounts for the following reason.

AOL has an internal policy and a web mail feature (report spam button) that allows an AOL user to highlight one or more mail items in their account and simply press a button to report all that mail as SPAM. AOL's response to this is to use the internal headers of the mail messages and automatically file complaints to all the network operators and ISP's that were involved with the delivery of the mail. AOL doesn't look at the actual headers to determine the origin of the mail, that would be the responsible thing to do. Instead they make the assumption that all the systems that were responsible for routing the mail were at fault.

This policy results in complaints being filed with our network provider as well as with us. Two things happen when that occurs. First, our provider requires us to take specific action to stop the SPAM. But that is impossible since we didn't originate it. AOL averages the number of complaints filed against an ISP and if the number begins to grow they stop accepting mail from that ISP or network for a specific period of time.

Why is this unfair to us? Customers that we host that do not take advantage of our spam filtering technology simply forward all their email to AOL. Once in AOL they typically highlight all messages and report them as spam even though they have forwarded them from their own account. In this case, LightHouse Hosting receives complaints about each and every piece of mail reported as spam because the mail was forwarded from our network. However we had nothing to do with the actual SPAM delivery. On the other hand the spammers receive a single complaint usually resulting in no action.

The AOL report spam button is a gimmick and fools AOL users into believing they and AOL are doing something about SPAM. That is simply not true. The system is flawed and AOL will not address the underlying problem, reporting responsible ISP's as SPAMMERS. Therefore we, along with other major providers have placed a ban on all AOL forwards.