Good Fucking Grief... AOL does it again.

[Vympel]

My Dad mortified me two years back when I was petitioning for cable in our house (which I now have) and he said

"we're gonna get AOL. It's the biggest"

Dumbass.

[Ted]

My Dad mortified me two years back when I was petitioning for cable in our house (which I now have) and he said

"we're gonna get AOL. It's the biggest"

Dumbass.

Can you even get AOL in Aussie land?

[Crayz9000]

I use AOL since I started on the Internet back in 94. I have no real complaints about them and don't understand some of the vitrol but then again I am not a uber internet guy, I hardly know what an ISP is so I'm not one to gauge I guess.

The thing is that, in the name of blocking spam, they're blocking E-mails from legitimate sources. I've been having trouble E-mailing some of my friends who are on AOL--they never get my E-mails. And I'm using Verizon's official mail server.

[Crayz9000]

I should have clarified this. If you have an email server on a DHCP lease, your emails get blocked. Not if you have an email address from an ISP and your computer is assigned a DHCP lease.

Odd, that, because AOL seems to be blocking my E-mails. I'm using Verizon's mail server (but with my own E-mail address in the Reply-to: field)...

[Stravo]

I use AOL since I started on the Internet back in 94. I have no real complaints about them and don't understand some of the vitrol but then again I am not a uber internet guy, I hardly know what an ISP is so I'm not one to gauge I guess.

The thing is that, in the name of blocking spam, they're blocking E-mails from legitimate sources. I've been having trouble E-mailing some of my friends who are on AOL--they never get my E-mails. And I'm using Verizon's official mail server.

Everytime I open up my box, its jam packed with fucking spam. They've been getting alot of pressure from their customers about this. I guess being the largest ISP makes them the largest target for spam. Anyway I've been using their spam blocking feature on AOL 8.0 and I STILL get an inbox full of spam. They just recently announced having blocked 1 BILLION spam emails in one day. Its a serious problem and I guess they're acting rashly in trying to control it.

BTW WTF does the spam guys get out of spam, does ANYONE repsond to that crap???

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

BTW WTF does the spam guys get out of spam, does ANYONE repsond to that crap???

A lot of times, the spammers like to send out nasty emails for the same reason virus writers bomb us with viruses: Because they think it's funny to permanently scar some anonymous n00b for life. How about if I find the spammer and whack em in the head with the butt of an AK47 a few times? Ya think they'll like that? (yes I'll disinfect the AK47 afterward. No point wasting a perfectly good firearm )

[Crayz9000]

Everytime I open up my box, its jam packed with fucking spam. They've been getting alot of pressure from their customers about this. I guess being the largest ISP makes them the largest target for spam. Anyway I've been using their spam blocking feature on AOL 8.0 and I STILL get an inbox full of spam. They just recently announced having blocked 1 BILLION spam emails in one day. Its a serious problem and I guess they're acting rashly in trying to control it.

Well, the main problem is that the bulk of the spam comes from Southeast Asia, and those mail servers are constantly switching IP addresses, meaning that you can't simply block a range as AOL thinks you can do. In the Slashdot discussion, they mentioned that there *is* a solution to the Asian spam problem, but the people at AOL have shown a casual disregard for the standards, meaning that they're not likely to implement the solution.

Stravo, just go to another internet service provider. AOL isn't likely to get any better, if anything they'll just get worse, and they are likely ripping you a new A-hole from their insane billing rates. You can usually find decent local dialup providers around $12/month, and they're far more effective at stopping spam than AOL is. Same thing with local broadband providers.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Well, the main problem is that the bulk of the spam comes from Southeast Asia, and those mail servers are constantly switching IP addresses, meaning that you can't simply block a range as AOL thinks you can do. In the Slashdot discussion, they mentioned that there *is* a solution to the Asian spam problem, but the people at AOL have shown a casual disregard for the standards, meaning that they're not likely to implement the solution.

Stravo, just go to another internet service provider. AOL isn't likely to get any better, if anything they'll just get worse, and they are likely ripping you a new A-hole from their insane billing rates. You can usually find decent local dialup providers around $12/month, and they're far more effective at stopping spam than AOL is. Same thing with local broadband providers.

Did you say 'Broadband'?

Broadband: $40-60

AOL: $23.95

So if you go to BB, You can get all the benefits of a fast connection WITH NONE of the 'Issues' common with Dialup, All for less than twice the price of AOL's grossly overpriced bullshit...

[Dalton]

Be wary of cheap local providers, though. They can be a pain in the ass; I know from experience.

In my experience, the best dialup I've ever used (when I still had 56K) was Erols/RCN (on Sheppard's recommendation). They're a bit cheaper than AOL and don't force you into some shell browser.

[Crayz9000]

True. Some are better than others. For a while, we used an ISP that was based in Arizona. They only asked $14/month, and we connected to the local backbones like Starnet, UUnet, etc.

I'd just look over an index site like dslreports.com before making any decisions...

[Pu-239]

Be wary of cheap local providers, though. They can be a pain in the ass; I know from experience.

In my experience, the best dialup I've ever used (when I still had 56K) was Erols/RCN (on Sheppard's recommendation). They're a bit cheaper than AOL and don't force you into some shell browser.

I'm using that. Pretty slow due to shitty phone lines in the neighborhood though. I set up Earthlink for someone. You don't need a shell browser for that either.

[Pu-239]

Well AOL does do a lot of funding for the mozilla project... that's their only saving grace. I would have liked Netscape, Nullsoft, and a bunch of others to have been independent though.

Maybe when they switch all their windows AOL users to a gecko engine, I'll be happy. Then people might start making standards compliant JS.

[Alyeska]

AOL's priority is to get new members, you would be shocked at how low the priority of support is for current members. When I worked in the password department the average wait time was an hour long, while potential new members calling in were automatically shifted to the front of the wait list.

Whoever came up with that idea should not be in business.

Also, they treat their employees like shit.

That proves just how stupid AOL is. At this rate they will exhaust the supply of potential customers when they piss them all off. It is a well known fact that it is far cheaper to keep the customers you have then it is to get new ones. If AOL were to shift half the expense they are spending on new customers into support services their profits would skyrocket as the rate at which customers were leaving suddenly drop. At the same time AOL would get only a slightly reduced rate of new customers. But they don't because they are to stupid.

[Pu-239]

AOL collapsing is a bad thing. They'll move on to MSN...

[Soontir C'boath]

AOL collapsing is a bad thing. They'll move on to MSN...

Hey if AOL collapse, and it's part of Time Warner.... that might nick my Road Runner cable connection too when AoL takes it down HARD

Oh well, can always go Verizon.

Cyaround,
Jason

[Gandalf]

My Dad mortified me two years back when I was petitioning for cable in our house (which I now have) and he said

"we're gonna get AOL. It's the biggest"

Dumbass.

Can you even get AOL in Aussie land?

Yes, we can, AOL means Australia On Line here. And we have a different voice that says you have email.

[phongn]

I use AOL since I started on the Internet back in 94. I have no real complaints about them and don't understand some of the vitrol but then again I am not a uber internet guy, I hardly know what an ISP is so I'm not one to gauge I guess.

Years ago they were actually good (like in 1994, but they were also expensive back then). Today they suck.

[phongn]

I should have clarified this. If you have an email server on a DHCP lease, your emails get blocked. Not if you have an email address from an ISP and your computer is assigned a DHCP lease.

Odd, that, because AOL seems to be blocking my E-mails. I'm using Verizon's mail server (but with my own E-mail address in the Reply-to: field)...

Could be another reason right there, or they might be doing an IP lookup on your reply-to address.

[Crayz9000]

Could be another reason right there, or they might be doing an IP lookup on your reply-to address.

Whatever it is, it's far from standard and somewhere near insane. For that matter, so is Verizon's setup (they block Port 25, making you use their SMTP server... and recently, they tried to get everyone to switch to a new SMTP server that *only* accepts @verizon.net E-mail addys... in other words, if you don't pay us extra for a useless E-mail address, you're screwed. At least the old server is still running... for now anyway.)

[darthdavid]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! I wuv roadrunner. If AOL crashes That dies. And i love my recently obtained mozilla. If AOL dies they loose funding. Why oh why oh why. Evil dies, so does fun. Evil lives fun is diminished. AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!