Final migration of Verizon email addresses to AOL

AOL were kind enough to share some details about the shutdown of the Verizon mail system and the migration of @verizon.net email address to the AOL mail service:

What is the cut-over date for the verizon.net MX record?

  • The cut-over date for the mx record for verizon.net to to be handled by AOL is June 20, 2017. This will occur after midnight sometime on Tuesday morning June 20 EDT.

 

How will IPs and servers that only previously connected to verizon.net be handled by the AOL Spam and Mail System?

  • The AOL Mail system has been handling a great deal of the verizon.net mail already and has stored information about the relationships between senders and recipients.

Online Help Article

https://help.aol.com/articles/verizon-east-mail-migration-faqs-for-email-service-providers

Verizon East Mail Migration – FAQs for Email Service Providers

Beginning in February 2017 Verizon began notifying customers that they are preparing to leave the email business and will no longer provide email service for customers with a verizon.net email address. Verizon has provided 2 options to these customers for handling email going forward, including the ability to keep their verizon.net email address. Each customer will be provided their own date and timeline to take action to ensure their access to email is not interrupted. Other than this change, no other Verizon services are impacted.

What are the 2 options that Verizon provided to verizon.net email customers?

Option 1. Keep your current email address.

Customers can choose to retain their verizon.net email address by migrating to AOL Mail. By choosing this option customers will:

  • Keep their verizon.net email address.

  • Retain email, contacts and calendar(s). – Verizon and AOL will migrate customer data saved on Verizon servers.

  • Log in to mail.aol.com to access their mail after migration.

Option 2. Try a new email provider.

Customers can choose to use another email provider and set up a new account with an email provider of their choosing, such as Gmail or Outlook.com. By choosing this option, customers will:

  • Lose their current verizon.net email address.

  • Need to manually move their email, contacts and calendar(s).

 

What is the process to migrate a verizon.net email account to AOL Mail?

When it is time for a customer to move their verizon.net mail to AOL Mail, they will be notified by an email from Verizon and messaging on webmail.verizon.com. Customers select Option 1 in the email or on webmail to begin the AOL Mail registration process. Once they register with AOL, they will have access to their verizon.net email, folders and contacts on mail.aol.com.

What is the timeline for the mail migration?

Each customer will be provided their own date and timeline to take action to ensure their access to email is not interrupted. The last notifications are tentatively planned for June 2017.

What data is migrated to AOL Mail?

Customers may have data saved either on Verizon’s servers or on their local computers, or both. Only data that resides on Verizon’s servers will be migrated.

If a customer uses mail.aol.com to access their email, they will only see data that was previously saved on Verizon’s servers.

If a customer uses a third party application, such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail, etc., they will continue to see data formerly saved on Verizon’s servers as well as data stored locally on their computers.

How can senders ensure that whitelists or feedback loops continue working after they migrate to AOL Mail?

AOL has worked closely with Verizon and will maintain existing Whitelisting and Feedback Loops.

For Feedback Loops and Whitelist maintenance after the cut-over, contact the AOL Postmaster.

 

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AOL accidentally hard bounces valid mail

Last night (Mar 29, 2017) between about 8pm Eastern and 9:30pm Eastern AOL suffered a technical issue. Every email sent to them received a “Recipient address rejected” reply.  One example of the error message:
Mar 29 20:45:12 p2-lvmail11 lsb1-99-208-250/smtp[22251]: A88DFC2DBE9: to=<redacted@aol.com>, relay=mailin-01.mx.aol.com[64. 12.91.195]:25, delay=0.18, delays=0.01/0/0.14/0.03, dsn=5.1.1, status=bounced (host mailin-01.mx.aol.com[64.12.91. 195] said: 550 5.1.1 <redacted@aol.com>: Recipient address rejected: aol.com (in reply to RCPT TO command))
The issue was brought to AOLs attention and things were fixed rapidly after that. An AOL representative has stated that these were invalid replies and that addresses do not need to be removed from future emails.
Most of the ESPs are aware of this and are working to restore any bounced addresses to their users. At some places this requires manual intervention, so it’s taking some time to get all the addresses restored.
This is one of the reasons that our best bounce handling recommendations are not to remove an address for a single bounce – sometimes the ISPs have technical problems. Like the time a routing failure meant a major ISPs MX machines couldn’t reach their authentication servers to get the list of active users. Or the time all an ISPs MXs were removed from DNS. A lot of the internet is still managed manually, and despite extensive safeguards put in place bad things can, and do, still happen. Usually these problems are resolved quickly and mail starts flowing again.
Morning advice: Do not deactivate addresses that bounced at AOL last night.
 

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