>Folks:
>
>In light of the difficulties that PL members using AOL have had in getting
>postings, I thought this might be of interest.  It appeared today in the
>"What's New" Section of the AOL Index. I noted that netcom.com was not
>included in among the defendants, but that doesn't mean that it's not being
>filtered out, I suppose.
>
>Mary Krugman

Netcom is not the spammer; spammers are using Netcom, the internet service
provider, to send out their spam.  This is a problem many ISPs have.
Vigilant ISPs immediately suspend the accounts of spammers.  Some ISPs are
more vigilant than others.  Apparently, Netcom was not too vigilant, so
other people saw an increase in spam that was coming from the netcom.com
domain.  The technowizards of these other ISPs, including AOL, have the
ultimate solution at their disposal when they come to the conclusion that
another ISP is not being vigilant...they filter out that ISP.  That is what
has happened in this case.  Since netcom began being filtered, and
following the uproar that then ensued from their subscribers that their
mail was getting bounced (imagine you are a netcom subscriber, and your
chief means of communication with your most important client, who provides
you 90% of your income, is email, and your client is an AOL subscriber, and
now your mail doesn't get through to AOL...how loud would yell at netcom?
And how soon would you be with another ISP?), netcom has become more
vigilant, and is trying to clean up their client accounts.  But the damage
is done, repair will be a long time coming.  The loss of subscribers will
likely be substantial, and netcom may or may not survive.

The three folks being sued have set up domains for the express purpose of
sending out spam, because fewer and fewer ISPs will provide service to
spammers.  That is a big difference from somebody using their ISP to send
out spam.  The analogy would be if Mary began sending spam from her AOL
account.  She would get kicked off of AOL in a hurry, once the complaints
began.  But AOL doesn't exist to send spam.  What we have here are a few
bad apples at netcom...and now netcom is apple cider.

________________________________________________
Dan Becker,  Executive Director              "What's this? Fan mail
Raleigh Historic                                       from some flounder?"
Districts Commission                               - Bullwinkle J. Moose

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