SCI/TECH: AOL Treats Fla. Emergency E-Mails As Spam

Originally posted by Jamuhn
But anyway, what took you so long to get AOL? I guess it takes awhile to get cable out in the boondocks.

You are making no sense at all. At the time I purchased my first computer there were only on line boards called BBS, there were no on line services as we know them today. Kindly explain what yuare getting at.

But thanks for admitting that is the way it should work.

? I use aol, no problems, get spam all the time. What does AOL to make it so bad? I don't get it, I can go to websites, IM people, and get email. I can even play games online if I wanted to, but that sucks so I don't.

Must be the same people who think Macs are so great cause no one hacks them, not realizing that just because no one steals you old rusted out Pinto(Mac) doesn't mean your Pinto(Mac) is better then the neighbors Jaguar(PC).

So, what is the difference? What, does Hotmail give you money? Does it send a hooker to your house every pay day or something? If you get IMs, Mail, gaming, and websites, what else do you need with the internet?

I won't do the research for you James, but call up a few independent sites that evaluate & rate the various offerings and you'll quickly see that AOL is not as secure, doesn't offer the same on-line storage capacities, etc. and it costs more.

Ah good old AOL...

Let's see...

Some things some of you seem to be missing except 1 or 2 people.

1) Any email address can be whitelisted by an administrator and none of the message coming in from that address will be caught in the spam blocker. It doesn't matter what criteria the message meets, if the address has been whitelisted, it will go through.

2) Some of you complain about AOL claiming they can't do anything. You miss the point that no one wants to do anything for you individually. You are a single customer. If your recipes are not arriving, or the pictures of your cat are being held up, the monolith that is AOL honestly could not care less. Emergency messages on the other hand should be a different story.

3) AOL doesn't have very good reaction time when it comes to problems being uncovered. I have personally dealt with them on bugs that I discovered in their software in the late-90s and I can tell you firsthand that regardless of how potentially devastating a bug could be, AOL would not act on it until sufficient reason had come out to merit their bothering to act on it.

4) Plenty of ISPs have similar problems. It's been a major focus of companies worldwide to do something about users' complaints about spam. People want ZERO spam to come through, and that does require agressive filtering. Too agressive and you wind up with false positives. Trust me, I have one at my office. In the last 10 days it blocked ~98,000 garbage mails. In that 98,000 mails there were oh... 20 false positives. Oops. Make your choice, 98,000 crap mails or 20 that need to be released.

The blame should lie with AOL for this, but only partly. The real blame belongs to those unethical cretins who have forced ISPs to put barbed wire fences around their email gateways. We are the users of the internet, and we no longer want this garbage. Our ISPs report to us and are forced to do something about that. Blame the problem creators, not the ones trying to solve it, inept as they sometimes are, their intentions aren't always bad.

[edit on 5-3-2005 by Djarums]

Costs more? It costs me 11 dollars a month.

Storage? What are you storing? No spam, nothing to store. Not as secure? How? A fire wall is what you use, along with Norton, why would you rely on AOL or whoever? I wouldn't trust Net Zero, AOL, District, whatever, with virus protection, that is why I have a firewall I have to turn off just to get online, then turn it back on after I do it is so "protective" it won't let me online.(makes sense, gee, cars kill people, make it so the car doors won't open so no one can drive)

Costs more? It costs me 11 dollars a month.

Storage? What are you storing? No spam, nothing to store. Not as secure? How? A fire wall is what you use, along with Norton, why would you rely on AOL or whoever? I wouldn't trust Net Zero, AOL, District, whatever, with virus protection, that is why I have a firewall I have to turn off just to get online, then turn it back on after I do it is so "protective" it won't let me online.(makes sense, gee, cars kill people, make it so the car doors won't open so no one can drive)

Must agree with James on that point. If you rely on your ISP as your only form of protection... uh, good luck to ya!

There are so many free protection programs out there. Firewalls, spyware scanners and blockers. Relying on AOL for your protection is something that is excusable until you have had the internet in your home for two weeks. By that point, you should hopefully have understood the importance of downloading one of the million and a half free programs to cover your rear end.

How ironic!

AOL treats emergency broadcasts as spam yet they wont stop spamming our phones or mailboxes.

Get a rope!

Better yet, support your local ISPs (if there are any left).

But honestly, I want to caution all of you about living in Florida and using AOL at the same time.

I'd rather stand on a golf course during a thunder storm while I hold up a ten foot rod.

I'd rather pull on my oxygen tube while I walk around on the moon.

I'd rather scream "Crusade, crusade!" in Iraq while draped in an American flag without a US soldier in sight.

I'd rather have babies with Linda Tripp.

I'd rather be a little boy who spends the night at the Neverland Ranch.

I'd rather lite up a BBQ pit inside a meth lab.

People live in Flordia *AND* use AOL?

I'd rather put a gun to my head and pull the trigger.

California might break off and fall into the ocean one day but Florida.....

Remember how the first poltergist (sp?) movie ended? Thats whats going to happen to Florida one day. The demons are just going to implode it. Its going to be harsh.

Get out while you still can!

Dont live in Florida.

Dont use AOL.

And whatever you do, for God's sake! Dont do both at the same time! Thats just insane!

Okay, Im done. But really, using AOL in Florida does nothing except accelerate negative quantem energy which might hyper-enduce our planet into a state of neological grandouches magnableakyism.

Take some responsibility!

PLEASE!

Genfinity you are down right hilarious. I loved your take on the issue.

The Punchline: Florida AOL Users Probably Demanded It

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop on this one.

I can see it now. An elderly AOL user huddles over his computer in knee-deep water as winds drive torrents of rain through the heavily damaged roof of his flat.

"Again with the hurricanes? 100 MPH winds, rivers of rain, water up to my tookas, and they send me email telling me this? It's not enough that I'm being washed away, but they have to fill up my mailbox with junk? That does it, I'm complaining!"

Perhaps the real joke in this case is that I'm not joking.

"Again with the hurricanes? 100 MPH winds, rivers of rain, water up to my tookas, and they send me email telling me this? It's not enough that I'm being washed away, but they have to fill up my mailbox with junk? That does it, I'm complaining!"

Having just returned from a weeklong vacation in that region, I want to know, how do you know the guy who was my neighbor down there? Got him to a T.

Ok, I saw a commercial for a 3 month 9.99 deal with Netscape, so far only thing cheaper then my AOL.

Also, damned if you do, damned if you don't. "WAAAA!!!! I get Spam, AOL, do something!" SO they do. "WAAAA!!!!! I stopped getting Spam, AOL, do something!"

Originally posted by James the Lesser
Ok, I saw a commercial for a 3 month 9.99 deal with Netscape, so far only thing cheaper then my AOL.

Also, damned if you do, damned if you don't. "WAAAA!!!! I get Spam, AOL, do something!" SO they do. "WAAAA!!!!! I stopped getting Spam, AOL, do something!"

James AOL owns Netscape and from what I understand they use the very same servers.

Domain Name: NETSCAPE.COM
Registrar: AMERICA ONLINE, INC. DBA AOL AND/OR COMPUSERVE-AOL
Whois Server: whois.registrar.aol.com
Referral URL: www.registrar.aol.com... IP Address: 198.95.251.10
Name Server: NS.NETSCAPE.COM
Name Server: NS2.NETSCAPE.COM
Name Server: NS1.NETSCAPE.COM