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04/19/2004 Archived Entry: "AOL is blocking email"

Bad enough that Google will read and keep all of your Gmail. Now AOL is reading and censoring your email. According to the LangaList,

AOL is at it again. This time, it's reading *inside* its members' emails, and preemptively blocking any messages that contain links to sites that AOL doesn't want you to see.

Note: I'm *not* talking about simple mail blocks, where a mail is discarded if it originates from a "forbidden" address. No: AOL is parsing the content of its members' emails and blocking them even if they merely *mention* a site that AOL disapproves of.

This is spam control run amok...and you can't override it with a "whitelist" of approved senders. If get your email through AOL (or cs.com or netscape.net), you'd best be looking for a new ISP, or an alternate email service that doesn't take spam filtering out of your hands. And tell your friends who are AOL subscribers, in case they're wondering why they're missing emails. (Thanks to our friends the Millers for passing this on to us.)

brad