Michael Gracie

A big deal was made out of the “paid email” initiative AOL was embarking on. Maybe the cadre making the big stink should look for a new target to whine about - AOL is a shrinking force.

Of course, even if the “certified email” scheme works, spammers may just fight the blockade with humor.

Declan McCullagh over at Politech makes note of the problems the DearAOL campaign is having getting through to AOL subscribers, and the email threads he has posted are worth a quick read.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation sent out a press release claiming AOL is deliberately blocking all messages with “www.DearAOL.com” in the body. The EFF makes no mention of the fact that AOL subscribers themselves might be responsible, by marking the unsolicited messages they received as spam. They also quoted Wes Boyd of MoveOn regarding the issue, but failed to mention that MoveOn has a reputation for less than diligent list management.

Rather than debate the issue, I’d like to hear from some AOL subscribers on this one. If you are an AOLer, and you marked one of these “DearAOL” messages as spam, let the world know. And to be fair, if you are an AOL subscriber who opted-in for these messages, only to have them blocked thereafter, speak up as well (and make sure to say whether you added the sender to your acceptable senders list too).
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Carl Hutzler gives some serious information on the whole AOL/Goodmail issue. In depth, and a heck of a lot better that AOL has dispensed to date (link compliments of the Happy Software Prole).

More “straight from the horses mouth” that AOL, Goodmail, or the DearAOL campaign, and certainly heads above my crap. Thanks Carl.