>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 [log in to unmask]