AOL News

http://spamkings.oreilly.com/archive...nds_on_sp.html


The highlights:

"Ok, I have to say this. It's NOT stupid to blacklist AOL. It should have been done years ago. The only reason they haven't been subject to this is because they were the world's largest ISP which is no reason to give them special treatments.

They have consistantly been the source of spam, spam issues, and let me tell you. They won't think twice about blacklisting someone just simply because one of their users said an email is spam. Disregard the fact that it was a mailing list that they DID sign up for but didn't feel the need to remove themselves from the list.

AOL needs to learn, and fast, that they can't keep pushing smaller ISPs and businesses around just because they WERE the largest ISP in the world. Even when one is the largest that doesn't make it right."


Then another commenter replied to that poster,

"Again, AOL, Earthlink, Microsoft, etc, are *bankrolling* several VERY EXPENSIVE lawsuits against spammers. Listing them in MAPS or any other RBL list is just plain stupid. Everyone should be teaming up to fight the spammers, not taking little potshots (which is what listing AOL in an RBL really is) here and there."


Then, the gem of the evening:

"I work at the abuse desk of an ISP, and I will tell you that AOL constantly spams our abuse address with complaints(half of which aren't for our network) to the tune of about 300 emails a day on average. Nevermind that they don't reply to any responses and a great deal of them are from AOL users that forward mail to themselves and then report themselves as spammers.

I've also heard rumors that AOL sells email lists, but can't confirm. I wouldn't be surprised either way on this. I do know that they try to act like they are big into anti-spam when in reality they don't seem to be all that interested in actually running a decent abuse department."