AOL Treats Florida Emergency Alerts Mail As Spam 256
ScentCone writes "Florida's Indian River County has 4,200 subscribers to their e-mailed emergency alerts, which provide a heads-up on hurricanes, tornados, and other weather events. Subscribers like it, but if they're using AOL mailboxes, those alerts are being treated as spam. All of the subscribers get the mail blast as weather events unfold, and spam pattern detectors are being set off. The county emergency coordinator laments the resulting unreliability of the communication channel, and while few of us at this point think of cross-domain e-mail as reliably mission critical, the AOL-bound portion of a 4200-address blast doesn't seem like much in the spam scheme of things. My experience is that it doesn't take many receivers to mark mail as spam before the domain-wide filters lower some scoring threshold, and the pattern detectors kick in. How many of us run systems that include explicitly voluntary, opt-in e-mail subscription mechanisms which are then reported as spam by the subscribing recipients? This seems increasingly common, and even the whitelisting by smarter recipients doesn't fix it."
Spam filters are fun... (Score:5, Funny)
Our corporate spam filter (which is administered from Japan, BTW) will discard any email message that has the word 'test' somewhere in its title.
This produces considerable frustration amongst the engineers here, as our location happens to be a test facility....
^_^
Re:Spam filters are fun... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Spam filters are fun... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Spam filters are fun... (Score:2)
I myself rely on CloudMark's SafetyBar, its typically very good, based on a open user reporting protocol. While I'm very careful to only mark real Spam for their system, clearly there are plenty of users marking my RedHat mailing lists as Spam as well. I've become concerned that my marking stuff as NOT SPAM has stopped sending anything back to the server and ju
Re:Spam filters are fun... (Score:4, Interesting)
How about you set your mailbox filter to rely on a header rather than a subject tag? If using spamassassin, filter on "X-Spam-Status: yes" rather than whatever markings happen to be in the subject line. The forward (depending on the mail client) ought not to contain this same header.
This is also good practice to use on mailing lists too. Mailman and the like generally include X-Been-There headers. Filtering on this header instead of the subject line has all kinds of benefits such as personal responses to your postings on the list do not get stuffed into the list's mailbox, etc.
Re:Spam filters are fun... (Score:2, Insightful)
AOL customer satisfaction here: (Score:3, Funny)
Dear Valued Florida Alert System Customer,
Please be advised that a cyclone developing over the Atlantic can MAKE A HUGE WAVE IN A VERY SHORT TIME!
This information is credited to Dr. Adewale Ngurubo, head of Nigeria's Natural Disaster Catastrophes department. We estimates potential damages to run up to 419 million dollars. THIS IS A SERIOUS WARNING!
[If you wish to be taken off the list, please click here
Re:AOL customer satisfaction here: (Score:2)
This just in: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:This just in: (Score:4, Informative)
Mod parent up (Score:2)
AOL Kills (Score:5, Funny)
Misuse of email? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this sums up the problem right here; are these people relying on email to keep them updated on potentially life-threatening situations? Don't get me wrong, these messages shouldn't be marked as spam, but depending solely on these email warnings is seriously asking for trouble, considering how many different things can delay these messages or even cause them to disappear completely. Email wasn't designed to be a bulletproof message delivery system.
Re:Misuse of email? (Score:2)
Re:Misuse of email? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this sums up the problem right here; are these people relying on email to keep them updated on potentially life-threatening situations?
The same can be said of radio, television, and even telephone. The point is that it is an additional means of notification. I.e., if you get the information out via enough different types of media, hopefully everyone will get it.
It's not like they said that the email is now the only way to get the alerts. I presume the National Weather Service still makes the appropriate announcements and the local TV and radio stations also carry the information.
Re:Misuse of email? (Score:2)
Re:Misuse of email? (Score:2)
Usually these email alert systems are tied into other region-wide alert systems. The messages are also distributed through the Weather radio stations, the emergency radio stations, via an automated phone system, fax alerts, the Emergency Broadcast System, etc.
FEMA was working on such systems before they got wrapped into the Department of Homeland Security. These days, I think there is a fair amount of funding for thes
Re:Misuse of email? (Score:2)
Re:Misuse of email? (Score:2)
See, this is where you get into the realm of what some people consider appropriate, and some don't. I'm of the opinion that any message that was mailed to thousands of recipients most certainly should be marked as spam. If I sign up for a mailing list, I can whitelist it myself. If you trust your ISP to do your spam filtering without any input from you ... well, of course not everyone is going to be satisfied with the results.
Re:Let's not forget... (Score:2)
What they are really going to accomplish is to lose anybody who depends on incoming email for important matters. I would think this would
Domain Keys works (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Domain Keys works (Score:2)
I wonder if part of the problem here is part of the advice that we in the tech community give to c
Reliability (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Reliability (Score:2)
And if you've ever worked in an office with no windows and no TVs, you might not realize there was a weather alert. I used to work right through tornado warnings without knowing the sirens were on...
For critical things like emergency notifications, the more options the better. Note that I have other procedures in place fo
E-mail for emergencies? (Score:5, Insightful)
You obviously have an office with a window (Score:2)
Now, we do have our operations center monitoring an emergency weather alert box and telling people when to head for shelter, but this whole assuming people (in computing, no less) see the sun i
Re:You obviously have an office with a window (Score:2)
Re:You obviously have an office with a window (Score:2)
It would also seem to be odd looking for the sun when a tornado or a hurricane is approaching!
In all seriousness, I think that a big enough tornado will suck clouds into it and will allow for clear blue sky near the system. So in that case, seeing the sun might be kind of a scary deal.
Re:E-mail for emergencies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us work in functional caves, and only get to see the outside world a few times a day. My office, the server room, is like this. I'm in here pretty much all day. Sometimes the drive-home weather is a surprise..
Re:E-mail for emergencies? (Score:2)
Re:E-mail for emergencies? (Score:2)
But yeah, it's pretty shitty, just not for that reason.
Re:E-mail for emergencies? (Score:2)
Granted these were Internal e-mails, but the idea was pretty good, and it worked. It's too bad AOL has t
Re:E-mail for emergencies? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I've very happily used systems like this to get highly localized alerts about other places, where my local broadcasting services would be useless. For example, say you have elderly parents 300 miles away... it's nice, while you're toiling in your cube, to get a little info about impending scary weather in distant Smalltown, and to make a check-up phone call.
Or, say I'm planning on going phea
Spam filtering (Score:3, Funny)
In other news, (Score:5, Funny)
Similar experience with ScanUSA vs Yahoo Mail (Score:5, Informative)
I do not see them being useful or reliable in a severe emergency like an earthquake, but they may be useful for Amber Alerts, a chemical leak from one of the oil refineries or weather alerts. I also worry if I'll see a message from Big Brother to keep an eye open for "Felon Guy Montag spotted at Spruce and Main streets", but that's another discussion.
Yahoo sometimes marks these messages as Spam, even if the sender is in my addressbook.
I have a couple theories why these messages are marked as Spam:
1. People may sign up with these alert systems and then forget they are on the mailinglists, and mark the email as spam. No surprise here, it happens all the time.
2. Many of these email alert systems don't contain useful content in the email. Instead, they ask you to click on a link to visit a website with more information. See this example from ScanUSA:
Subject: New Alert
SCAN, the Secure Cops Alert Network, has broadcast an alert:
Date Issued: 01.03.2005 12:01:21 PT
Alert Type: OTHER ALERT
Alert Priority: INFORMATIONAL
Click on this link to view the entire alert:
http://www.scanusa.com/viewalert.php?something [scanusa.com]
That's it. The "Alert" is pretty vague.
In a quick glance, many people may mistake this for Spam because they do not contain much of useful information, which makes it more likely that they will mark the alert as Spam. I get "Stock Alert" spam all the time.
It seems like the email itself should contain the actual Alert, with a hyperlink to the website with more information.
If the emergency email is sent to 50,000 people and everyone clicked at on the link at the same time, the site may die at the same moment when the Alert should be promote as heavily as possible.
When the site comes back up later on, the Alert may have been resolved.
Cure worse than the disease? (Score:2, Interesting)
I get a lot of spam (usually around 2,000 per day), but I still think some of the measures taken to stop spam are actually worse than the spam itself. I'd rather wade through a few hundred emails that are spam than miss one important one from a client.
Why is the shotgun approach so attractive in fighting spam?
Shotgun approach. (Score:2)
If people used shotguns on spammers, it will reduce spam.
Re:Cure worse than the disease? (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a reason for that.
Of the spam that winds up in my filtered folder, on any given day 50-70 percent comes from a Comcast IP address.
If enough Comcast customers would either switch and tell Comcast why or complain about them not locking down there servers (most are configured as open proxies), them maybe Comcast would get off their greeedy asses and do something about it.
Blame Comcast, not AOL.
AOL are generally a nightmare for mail (Score:3, Informative)
AOL has no problem with blacklisting people willy-nilly, even if they're other ISPs. I only have experience with a few large companies and their mail systems, but all have been blocked by AOL at some time or another for some supposed transgression.
It's high-time that those of us who run web-apps, and the like, took a stand against AOL and banned the use of their e-mail addresses in our systems. They're more trouble than they're worth.
Re:AOL are generally a nightmare for mail (Score:3, Interesting)
AOL isn't always bad (Score:5, Informative)
From a whois of aol.com
Technical Contact:
America Online, Inc.
22000 AOL Way
Dulles, VA 20166
US
Tel. 703 265 4670
Email: domains@aol.net
If you are doing mass mailings you need to setup a feedback loop with AOL in order to track the amount of complaints your mailings are generating. If you keep the complaint level below their set thresh hold you will not have problems with AOL, it's really as simple as that.
Re:AOL isn't always bad (Score:2)
AOL sounds all concerned when you contact them but they don't do anything about it.
Re:AOL isn't always bad (Score:2)
These companies aren't impossible to deal with if you simply ask what they need you to do in order allow your mail.
Unfortunately if you choose to go with a $4.95 a month hosting company you're going to run into trouble. Sometimes there is simply nothing you can do when people go with ultra-low cost hosting services who don't respond to spam complaints. You get what you pay for.
If you want so
Re:AOL isn't always bad (Score:2)
Re:AOL isn't always bad - bzzzt - WRONG! (Score:5, Informative)
You must not value your time much. First off, I run a high volume mailing list/newsgroup/webforum that has been in operation since 1996. AOL is continually a problem, but nothing like recenetly
As of two weeks ago, all AOL and Compuserve subscribers were removed and the mailing list shut down to those domains.
1) They are not 'easy' to work with. My emails to 'postmaster' went unanswered despite their website saying it was a valid method.
2) Their 'feedback' loops, once you sign up, forwards to you the email that one of their users reported as SPAM. (never mind this is an opt-in w/ confirmation list). AOL strips the 'To' address so you do not know who to contact. It makes the feedback look useless for a mailing list. I have to spend a day or two configuring VERP to figure out who it was.
3) My entire domain got blocked because one AOL user hit 'Report this email as SPAM' a dozen times. It took 3 calls and 3 hours on the phone to resolve.
4) They do offer a 'whitelist'. However to sign up for the whitelist you must agree to their guidelines. http://postmaster.aol.com/tools/whitelist_guides.h tml [aol.com]
What BS is this? They want me to guarantee that my mailing list meets the AOL T&C?
'Any e-mail sent to AOL members must conform to AOL's Community Guidelines http://legal.web.aol.com/aol/aolpol/comguide.html [aol.com]'
5) The whitelist states that every email should have a physical address and contact phone number for unsubscribing. More BS.
'All subscription based e-mail must have valid, non-electronic, contact information for the sending organization in the text of each e-mail including phone number and a physical mailing address.'
They are currently content filtering emails too. Any member of my mailing list two posts a message containing a link to 'angelfire' or 'hotfire' domains are bounced. Entire digets are bounced because a users signature contains their angelfire homepage. I tried to modify the mailing list so that 'http://' was stripped, but AOL still rejected it. Some emails that only contained 'alturl.com' (kinda like tinyurl.com) are bounced.
Re:AOL isn't always bad - bzzzt - WRONG! (Score:2)
Could you deal with this by placing a unique ID in each e-mail you send, perhaps as a header? If AOL returns the headers intact you could translate the SPAM report into an Unsubscribe request.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Emp
Re:AOL isn't always bad - bzzzt - WRONG! (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, that is what I did. However, this is very inefficient. Normally when you run a mailing list the same messages gets sent in one 'smtp' exchange with a mail server. Think of sending the same message to 50 recipients. Only one copy of the message is needed and you tell the AOL SMTP server the 50 recipients. Once you start having to 'personalize' each message, that one message needs to be sent 50 times to each recipients. A waste of time and bandwidth.
Re:AOL isn't always bad (Score:2, Informative)
AOL is excessive with it's spam blocking policies, probably so that they can air all those totally annoying commercials about how good they are at blocking spam. Yeah, they're good at bl
Re: (Score:2)
Re:AOL isn't always bad (Score:2)
As a New England native, this baffled me for a while when I moved to Los Angeles...
Answer: those numbers refer to position in the city grid, not on the street. My inlaws live on a one block long street, but have a six digit address.
Re:AOL isn't always bad (Score:2)
I've got the same problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Needless to say, hotmail takes these emails and puts them in the junk mail folder. Lord knows what the other services are doing.
Now this isn't unsolicited email -- people are supposed to get this as part of their job. Are we supposed to give up on email if it involves sending to more than a couple people at a time. I even re-wrote the page to send out emails one-at-a-time: no luck. Still ends up in the spam box.
Seems to me like there's going to be a lot of businesses that have a real need for contacting people (besides sales) that are getting blocked. Anybody have a solution to this mess?
Hey guys, this might help: (Score:5, Funny)
Just a thought.
(The NOAA alerts are all upper case for some reason. I bet the email they send out contains the raw NOAA alert, and that triggers the spam filter all by itself).
Re:Hey guys, this might help: (Score:2)
A legacy of the teletype machines first used for widespread NWS alert bulletins, which only had uppercase letters.
Re:Hey guys, this might help: (Score:2)
This is not a real problem in this case (Score:2)
Broken spam filters are a serious problem, but this isn't really the best example of them (the fact that they catch personal, one-to-one email is a much more serious problem and harder to solve).
There are fairly well documented ways [aol.com] to help ensure that your legitimate email is not caught by spam filters at many ISPs. AOLs is one of the oldest and one of the simplest to sign up for. It's free, too.
Indian River County has chosen to A) not sign up for that system themselves and B) send their email themselv
The real problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
The REAL problem is that ISPs and Webmail providers use non-user specific spam filters that allow malicious users to perform what is essentially a denial of service attack. Of course, the users in this particular example who flagged the emails as spam are probably just stupid, not malicious, but I at least could just as well imagine spammers signing up for webmail services, sending each other spam and flagging it as valid email, for example, in an effort to "teach" the spam filter that it's not really spam after all.
The only real solution would be to move to a per-user filter configuration, but it's not clear to me how practical that would be. You could use a bayesian filter with automatic learning that also gets updated when the user reports false positives/negatives, and initially use another system (like SpamAssassin) until the filter is fully trained; but it's not clear what the computing costs of that really are (not to mention diskspace requirements for the token databases).
Considering the fact that signing up for these web-based services is usually free, I think that we will see more of this in the future.
Re:The real problem... (Score:2)
I don't know about this particular mailing, but generally it's due less to stupidity or malice than to a combination of laziness and difficulty of unsubscription. I have to use procmail to block Ticketmaster emails because they simply will not unsubscribe me! If there isn't a prominent "Click here to unsubscribe!" (and, remember, users have been trained to avoid those!), they'll find a d
Spam (Score:2)
When they want to un-subscribe (from a legitimate source) they use the tools provided to them to get rid of it as easily as they can.
Perhaps it's because the computer industry as a whole preaches to them "You'll never be unsubscribed from ANYTHING, by following the directions."
So they hit the "Mark as spam" button and go on with life - the minor annoyance is gone and they can browse their porn unint
Good demonstration (Score:3, Insightful)
But on the bright side, I hear a lot of the biggest spammers live in Florida? Great. Come the next hurricane season, I hope they all miss something important.
Re:Good demonstration (Score:2)
Opt-In doesn't always mean you can Opt-Out (Score:2)
However because I've forgotten the password I used, and because for some reason my attempts to reset it have always failed, I've resorted to sorting anything I receive from that domain into the trash.
Re:Opt-In doesn't always mean you can Opt-Out (Score:2)
I see a much lesser problem of people being unintentionally(or someone else intentionally) unsubscribed to announcement lists than the OSDN situation.
Of course I got Quicktime news for many moons after I said several times to unsubscribe.
Especially if you no longer use the email address (Score:2)
My of my 'legacy' email addresses forward to my inbox and i cant easily send email from them. Obviously I could change my mailer to set an appropriate from address - but it's easier just to mark it as spam.
Reverse-blacklists? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm surprised some enterprising sort hasn't created a blacklist for use by mailing list operators that tracks the likelihood of a domain's customers illegitimately reporting valid mail as spam. Then, newsletter admins could use that score as a guideline to how many hoops a would-be subscriber has to jump through before getting added to the list.
Coming in from a private domain that's never mis-reported ham as spam? Your reply to the confirmation email is enough to subscribe you. Signing up from moron.com with a mis-reporting likelihood of 35%? You can't subscribe until your mailserver admins have also acknowledged a confirmation message explaining what you're asking for and that you've already explicitly asked to do it.
Hmmm, I've been looking for a new project to start...
Laziness (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Laziness (Score:2)
That's assuming that "unsubscribing" really unsubscribes you from a list.
I can see how a biz will get "real" opt-in email lists, but prevent folks from unsubscribing just so they can sell their list saying "Ours is REALLY an opt-in."
Laziness... or last resort? (Score:5, Informative)
Problem was that the pager went off altogether too frequently, and my friend didn't care if there was a storm cell in -say- Flagler County, a hundred miles to the northeast. So he tried to unsubscribe, again and again and again... and those damned alerts just kept on comin'.
The list was really easy to get onto, but impossible to opt out of. My friend eventually had to change pagers to lose the things.
Moral: sometimes those broadcasts are solicited email that are no longer welcome, and there is no way to unsubscribe. I'd call that "spam": no-longer-solicited bulk email.
All Three of Them (Score:3, Funny)
It just goes to show (Score:2)
It also goes to show that heuristic and other such spam filters are a really terrible idea. I've had more problems than not with spam filters, so I just keep them shut off on my public accounts nowadays.
-Jesse
Re:It just goes to show (Score:2)
I have some email addresses that get forwarded to my phone. I have an email address FOR my phone. My phone is always on, and I am almost always near it. I don't have to be "at my computer" to get my email. How old-fashioned, thinking one would have to be "at a computer" to get email.
I hope AOL gets its pants sued off for blocking SO
happened to me (Score:4, Informative)
My solution was to simply loop through the list of email addresses and send each student an individual message. A little more resource intensive, but since the messages are occassionally important for their their coursework(as opposed to the occassional "cookies in the lounge" type messages) we couldn't afford to have any messages marked as spam.
Re:happened to me (Score:3, Funny)
Basically, email doesn't currently seem a very good method for broadcasting messages to a large number of opt-in recipients.
It needs some system where people configure their client to say what they want to subscribe to, and then let the upstream servers know what to filter for. Perhaps a system where you could post the message t
Darwin in Action (Score:5, Funny)
A way for the population to remove AOL subscribers from the gene pool, if you will.
Nature is a harsh mistress and hogs the bedcovers - plus she's got global warming
Spam filters are not the problem here (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is the spammers.
Kill the spammers (yes, I do mean that, I'm not using that term as a shorthand for denying their bandwidth access) and all the problems with the spam filters will solve themselves.
Spamming is not a free speech issue. It's an issue of people stealing huge amounts of a public good (bandwidth access) for their own private gain.
Spamming is similar to the Islamic and Jewish prohibition against eati
It takes far fewer thyan 4200 to be labeled "spam" (Score:2)
Too bad we cannot answer our phones, our US mailboxes, or even check email without constant threat of unsolicited advertisement or identity theft.
Time to call AOL (Score:2)
Talk to them about getting whitelisted. Since it's a government service (Indian River County) they should have little problems getting AOL to permanently whitelist the originating IP address.
Maybe they'll learn this time.
Nothing to see here, move along (Score:4, Insightful)
Wake up, false positives for spam filters are not news, and it's disingenuous to have a headline that implies "ooh, look what the evil AOL is doing now..." Bah, FUD.
Re:Nothing to see here, move along (Score:2)
Mass e-mail probably ruined for a long time (Score:3, Interesting)
Trying to communicate legitimately with mass e-mail is sort of like trying to talk to someone at a rock concert. Your lucky if they receive even one word of it.
California emergency reports, too (Score:2)
My local spamassassin filters Amber Alerts (Score:2)
The article doesn't mention it but what are the chances that the email sender is using a well-known SPAM tool, or a well-known SPAM tactic?
And this is why (Score:3, Interesting)
AOL mail stupidity (Score:2)
Sample e-mail (Score:2)
Seriously, everybody here in Florida in hurricane season is watching the NOAA page for last updates, and all TV and radio stations have continuous coverage - it is actualy very difficult to escape the hurricane latest news. I would not worry about the e-mail alerts.
AOL does this for tons of lists (Score:2)
AOL blacklists by ip address of the server sending the mail whenever some number of aol users who subscribe to the mailing list hit the "report as spam" button on their email client.
For legit mailing lists you wouldn't think this would happen, but an unbelievable number of aol users treat the "report spam" button as if it were the "trash" button.
To get unblocked by AOL you have to set up an account at which you will receive a request to unsubscribe from each user that uses the "report as spam" button.
Ho-hum (Score:2)
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:2)
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:2)
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:2)
Well, a little critical thinking isn't too much to ask for. Especiall when the mail they're looking at is one they asked for. That should make them a little less queasy about clicking the unsubscribe link. With AOL, though, one of the problems may be that certain presentations of
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:2)
Well to make a long story short, there was so much advertizing in the stuff that sprint wrapped arround the picture that spamassassin blocked it.
I do not know what is up with these messages, however I suspect it may be the same.
I pay sprint when I send a picture mail, why do they have to put 800 numbers and such in them...
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:5, Informative)
Why do people mark messages as spam that they willingly signed up for?
Several reasons. One is that the AOL user interface is pretty bad and it's easy to hit the button by accident.
Another is that people tend to select large swathes of messages in their inbox and mark them as spam in bulk, often mixing in the occasional legitimate email in the spam.
Another is that senders often don't make it clear enough who their email is from and the recipient clicks the This-Is-Spam button before they register that they really wanted it.
Another is that many people use the This-Is-Spam button as an Unsubscribe button, and click it when they don't want the email any more, rather than unsubscribing from the mailing list they signed up for. SpamCop gets used this way too.
(This all may or may not be related to the reason the mail was filed in the bulk folder, though. It was bulk email, the recipients hadn't whitelisted it... it's something of a crapshoot whether it'll get flagged as bulk in that case.)
Those us drunks... (Score:2)
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:5, Interesting)
To elabotrate (not attempt to half-sole), those of us who understand IT often grossly overestimate the average email/web user. I'd estimate that 90 percent of the people I know who use email are clueless about EVERYTHING. Click this, read email. Click this, delete email. Click this, send email. Click this, block email. That's the extent of their knowledge. Most probably think an IP address is the location of a public restroom, and believe Internet Explorer IS "the internet." And I'd bet that a huge chunk of them have at one time or another bought something through a spamvertized website.
Trying to educate them is hopeless--I know, I've tried. The best thing we can do is send as many as possible TO AOL, not try to lure them away from it. The protections AOL has in place makes knowledgeable users cringe, but they also protect the rest of us from clueless users, and those users from each other and themselves.
I say go AOL, go!
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:2)
"How do I opt out of getting this stupid thing? Fuggit, if I mark it spam, the rest won't show up."
Re:Email unreliable? No way! (Score:2)
Beating him won't get your mail to you any faster.
Try plying him with liquor instead.
Re:Should be criminial. (Score:2)
They make their Terms of Service available, and if it's not something that you accept, then don't buy service from them. Odds are, there's something in there that specifically states that they are not required to deliver every e-mail to you.
There are many people that simply do not want spam filtering (yes, this might seem odd to people out there, but if the cost of a false positive results in the loss of a large business contract, your cost of one lost legitimate message may outwe
Re:*bing!* you got gale (Score:2)
The water table in Florida is such that in most locations, basements are not feasible.
Re:Time for AOL to fix their spam handling! (Score:2)
As I posted to another comment, of the spam that winds up in my filtered folder, on any given day 50-70 percent comes from a Comcast IP address. SpamCop lists Comcast as the biggest source of spam, period.
If enough Comcast customers would either switch and tell Comcast why or complain about them not locking down there servers (most are configured as open proxies), them maybe Comcast would get off their greeedy asses and do something about it.
Blame Comcast, not AOL.