Slashdot Mirror
AOL Allegedly Censors 'Email Tax' Opponents
Mediacitizen writes "AOL was accused yesterday of censoring email to AOL customers that included a link to a site opposing AOL's proposed 'email tax.' Over 300 people reported that they had tried sending AOL subscribers messages that contained a link to www.DearAOL.com, but received a bounceback message informing them that their email 'failed permanently.' After the DearAOL.com Coalition -- 600 organizations convened by Free Press, MoveOn and EFF -- notified the press of this blocking, AOL quickly cleared the opposition URL from their filters, alleging a 'software glitch.'"
By pulling stunts like this, they clearly demonstrate their motives as benefiting themselves and not the customers.
Because you had doubts? AOL is a for-profit organization, not a charity. Corporations do the most heinous, immoral things if they can get away with it. When they can't get away with it, they don't do it, not because they're afraid to look bad, but because it displeases customers and therefore hurts the bottomline.
In short: it's all about money.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
That's the first thing I thought as well. I worked for AOL Support several years ago (nearly the worst job on this planet, although they were actually pretty good to their employees) - and phishing was a very big concern, and something they were trying to implement a plan for even back then. I frequently had people call in having troubles with the "AOL Payment forms you guys sent me a link to" - not realizing they were giving everything up to and including their SSN to some mob thug overseas. I wouldn't be shocked at all if this hit a spam filter for this reason. Then again, maybe I'm wrong and they really didn't like what the site had to say. *shrug*
Now is the time to cancel your AOL subscription!
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The problem is a lot of telemarketers call from jurisdictions where that's not enforceable - hence the reason you'll see boiler rooms in Montreal buying long distance in bulk. Dirty rat bastards.
> I don't *think hotmail or yahoo would either
n g-gmail-invitations-015942.php7 55,00.html ocking-gmail-invites/
I think MS certainly would...they've been accused of blocking GMail invites before, though they never admitted to doing it:
http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/is-hotmail-blocki
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,39157
http://google.weblogsinc.com/2004/06/23/hotmail-b
this is the most dangerous type of response to this story that i've seen.
the article says that all emails containing links to dearaol.com were blocked. Possibly there was one form email that everybody used, but it's also likely that a lot of the blocked emails were "hey look at this" type forwards. This is your basic contemporary grass-roots politicizing.
To casually label this kind of political activity spam is making an enormous statement in favor of repressing the rights of citizens to freely organize themselves towards political ends. I am not sure where you live, but in the United States, the majority of us value the right to associate with political groups and espouse their ideas. The fact that my friend's email provider could prevent me from telling them about some group i'm interested is very disturbing. But the fact that a lot of slashdotters seem to think it's within that company's rights to do so is even more disturbing then that. We know that companies make bad decisions, but to roll over and say "that's ok because that's the way it is" is completely unforgiveable in any upstanding individual.
--jacob robbins
Not to mention that MoveON probably sent a whole bunch of them. MoveON has a history of not processing unsubscribes or bounces well. "Let's send every AOL subscriber who has ever been on our list a copy of this URL!" Small wonder that when anyone else sent it, their email was also blocked.
It's amazing how much ignorance about spam, spam filtering, and Goodmail is freely available these days. Maybe somebody should tax ignorance? You say something stupid, "DING!" it costs you ten cents.
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