I recently spoke directly to an employee of America Online whose job it is to manage the ability of outsiders to send AOL users email … The employee said that they are the “red headed stepchildren” of AOL … They are for the simple reason that stopping the ability for a legitimate host to send AOL users email seriously screws up that person’s business …
I blame drunk people … and the reason I blame drunk people is due to the fact that all of my problems dealing with the inability to send AOL email stems from people that signed up on a band or bars email list and then report those messages when they come in to their inbox as a Terms of Service (TOS) violation to AOL … They say that the emails they’re getting are unsolicited email … The fact is, these people requested that they receive those emails … Rather than click on the unsubscribe link (which I never do myself), they shove the email over to the TOS …
The reason I myself never click on an unsubscribe link is because in most UCE, that link is simply a ruse to verify your email address and will do nothing but generate more SPAM … But in the case of the band or bar, I think those users should realize, hey, I was at that bar, or I saw that band, and it’s quite possible that I signed up for an elist that I really don’t want … In this case, having the familiararity of that band or bar ought to be enough to verify that the unsubscribe link isn’t in fact a ruse, but a legitimate way to stop the flow of email to that person … But we are talking about AOL users here, and drunk ones at that …
So, taking this many steps further, those drunk AOL users that willy nilly report these emails as SPAM and get my mail server denied access to AOL’s mail servers completely screw up the ability of a person I host who has nothing to do with bands or bars and don’t even drink that regularly at all … Maybe a cocktail at a holiday party to get warm and fuzzy for a little while … So Susie who hosts a simple site to display the photos of her new children can’t email Mom and Dad (who access AOL across the country) to tell them that there’s Day 5 pictures posted … Why?
Because AOL empowers their users to shut off my mail server even if it’s because AOL users are stupid idiots … What did the AOL employee have to say about that? That AOL receives fees from their customers and will do whatever their customers tell them to do because they’re paying them to do it … Oh! Well, guess we should bake them a cake? … But what about Susie’s parents? They never asked that their daughter’s email be shut off to them … Oh well … The AOL employee agrees that there are certain users that probably shouldn’t be allowed access to a computer …
Here’s another way I get screwed … An AOL user wants their own domain … They now have web space and a mail server … Instead of taking the time to learn that new mail server and all of the wonderful features that it provides, they simply set up one email address and forward all of that email to their AOL email account … Then, when SPAM comes through their domain and forwarded to their AOL account, they TOS that SPAM … Well, where did that SPAM come from? Their domain hosted on my servers, so basically *I* am getting blamed for that SPAM, and again, I am being shut down by AOL due to a stupid AOL user … bah!