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This is not directly related to any of my CiviMail installations, but rather, has to do with a bounce message I received on our company account after sending a small (about 650 contacts) mailing from our current site.

(The site is super-old - Civi 2.0.7 - and I'm in the process of redoing it at the moment.)

According to our host, AOL and Yahoo routinely temporarily delay receiving mail when there are too many from the same IP. This might explain the proliferation of AOL and Yahoo in the "unknown bounce type" and why the messages are subsequently reported as delivered, hence the discrepancy between bounces and successful deliveries.

Here's the key: If this is correct, and Civi reports these as bounces, these contacts should definitely not be put on hold, although reporting them as bounces is probably better than doing nothing. I would suggest adding an additional category - Delayed - for these messages. That would give a much more accurate picture about what's actually going on. AOL and Yahoo are (unfortunately) more than popular enough to address this issue.

Again, I'll mention here that the below message was received by our company account; it doesn't have to do with Civi per se. But I think it may well be relevant.

Below is the original error message I received, as well as the correspondence from the hosting company:
---- Delayed message 11-19-10 ----

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 24 hours on the queue on [mailserver].[host].com.

The message identifier is: 1PInwO-0005Pi-Qm
The subject of the message is: [Subject]
The date of the message is: Wed, 17 Nov 2010 14:45:05 -0500

The addresses to which the message has not yet been delivered are:

[contact 1]@aol.com
Delay reason: SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
host mailin-01.mx.aol.com [64.12.90.1]: 421 4.2.1 MSG=:
(DYN:T1) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/421dynt1.html
[contact 2]@aol.com
Delay reason: SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
host mailin-01.mx.aol.com [64.12.90.1]: 421 4.2.1 MSG=:
(DYN:T1) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/421dynt1.html
[contact 3]@aol.com
Delay reason: SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
host mailin-01.mx.aol.com [64.12.90.1]: 421 4.2.1 MSG=:
(DYN:T1) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/421dynt1.html

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.

---- End message ----

---- From [host] 11-21-10 ----

These are deferred errors which means aol received too many mails from this IP and temporarily delayed receiving mail, This is normal for aol and yahoo.

I have checked and mails are going fine to aol

---- End message ----