BARRINGER-L Archives

From: Erin Bradford <>
Subject: a little more about AOL's spam
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 06:19:12 -0800 (PST)
In-Reply-To: <200602191300.k1JD021H009292@lists2.rootsweb.com>

Sorry list to send yet another message to the list, but I wanted to clarify
something since the majority of subscribers to all my lists are from AOL. I
used to have AOL and learned a lot about how it works.

A very valid point was made about AOL having a spam box as well as an inbox,
but I found out it doesn't work quite as well as all that. It's true that
possible spam is filtered into a spam box, BUT if anyone actually says "yes,
that is spam" and marks it as spam, whether it's in the inbox or spambox, it
will be put on what they call (I think) a blacklist, which means if they try to
send anything from the address again, it won't even make your spambox. What I
call "professional spammers" can easily get around this b/c they don't use the
same address, or they use anonymous addresses, etc. This blacklist is very
difficult to get off of if you send legitimate mail, you can request being
added to the whitelist, but that doesn't guarentee that you won't be marked as
spam, it just helps increase your chances of getting through.

Rootsweb has already had a problem in the recent past where all Rootsweb
addresses were put on the blacklist by someone accidently marking the email as
spam (per my understanding of what happened). One thing with the
blacklist/whitelist thing, everytime you're blacklisted it gets harder and
harder to not be marked as spam. I sent the original email to warn
AOL/Compuserv users about what was going on just because of all my 9 lists, 75%
of the subscribers are from AOL or CompuServ. I'm not exactly sure how
CompuServ works, but I know it's either owned or partnered with AOL and
probably works very similarly. Even though it probably was an accident that
rootsweb was blacklisted initially, it's now highly probable it will happen
again and I wanted to give AOL/CompuServ members a warning before it did. If
you are an AOL subscriber or CompuServ subscriber and you stop getting mail for
a longer period of time than usual, it is very probably that Rootsweb was
blacklisted again and of course I can't let you know...because you are
subscribed with AOL or CompuServ.

Whether you set up an outside mail like yahoo or gmail, that's up to you, I
just wanted to give you notice and let you choose.

Erin


> Dear Erin, in defense of my AOL, I do have a spam box, and it's very
> accessible, and I go to it every day just as I would email box. I can then
delete
> the spam without reading, or if there should be some mistake and a contact
has
> accidentally gone to the spam folder, it allows me to click on "this is not
> spam" and it throws it back into my regular mail.


Erin Bradford

List manager
http://www.ncalhn.org
ALHN County Coordinator for multiple NC Counties
http://www.gendepository.com (the Genealogy Depository-Barringer, Black, Bradford, Coventry, Eller, Hackett, Hupp, and Kern)

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• a little more about AOL's spam by Erin Bradford <>