rtroxel — Sat, 29 May 2004 11:26:58 +0000

Now I'm having hassles with Comcast and AOL spam/virus blocking.

Very often my email won't download through the email app (Outlook Express), and instead I get a message that the server can't be contacted. If I use Internet Explorer and go directly to my mail account on the Comcast website, I can open the mail from there. Usually there are one or two spam emails with an attachment of some sort. These I delete.

The problem is that sometimes the email attachments are legit, but they still get blocked. The same thing happens when I send email with attachments to users on AOL.

In either case, I'm still getting up to 75% spam email daily, so their blocking techniques aren't working, anyway.

I've been reading articles on this subject, and I'm thinking about contacting Comcast and AOL. From what I've read lately, other broadband systems are having similar problems, but Comcast stands out in particular.

For a lively discussion about Comcast's spam problem, check this page:

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/42385

Vincent Puglia — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 15:23:05 +0000

Hi,

As an ex-AOLer ( I've recently moved over to a cable ISP [which means my site GrassBlade is in the process of being shut down (: ] ), I can attest to many, if not most, of the comments above. It's my belief that many of the restrictions imposed are not haphazard, but rather deliberate decisions to safeguard AOL's servers and 'reputation' as 'easy-to-use' and 'safe'. Consider: by disallowing activeX, etc in emails, their customers cannot plant/propogate viruses (at least not through the AOL mail server).

Vinny

andy206uk — Wed, 04 Feb 2004 17:30:55 +0000

Grrr... AOL are a pain in the backside. The new version has a "report as spam" button in the email client, which means that rather than unsubscribing from your newsletter AOL users just click the big red button. This is fine, until AOL recieve more than a certain number of compaints cos then they block your newsletter completly and if you send email from the same server that hosts the site THAT gets blocked as well!

I've had no end of problems because of this!

xxgeek — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 20:00:36 +0000

Don't you know what AOL stands for?
Almost On Line LOL

Greg K — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 05:08:08 +0000

Another reason I really respect a business web site listing "E-mail us at (comapny name)@aol.com."
-Greg

Renegade — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 19:07:19 +0000

mairving wrote: Always send out a text version with any HTML email to avoid this problem.

Either that or, always send out text emails

mairving — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 14:23:33 +0000

Yeah, AOL is the worst to get and to send email to since they tend to act like 'as long as one AOL customer can send email to another AOL customer everything is fine'. There is absolutely no reason for some of things that they do. They always screw up the headers in emails both coming and going. Attachments oftentimes won't open. Gotta love AOL.

Always send out a text version with any HTML email to avoid this problem.

mjs416 — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 13:53:01 +0000

rtroxel wrote: AOL has strict rules about what you can and can't use in HTML EMail.

For example...

For full information on AOL's EMail policies, see this page:
http://webmaster.info.aol.com/htmlemail.html

All the more reason not to use it.