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> > For today's reading leisure in Doctor Don's Waiting Room < <
    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

    Knowing that spam or unsolicited junk email is probably the
braodest topic on the Internet, this news is relevant to almost
everyone.

    AOL, citing spam from the Internet as their users biggest complaint,
has begun blocking messages to and from selected Internet domains. Five
examples of companies that have allegedly refused to work with them are:
answerme.com, cyberpromo.com, honeys.com, netfree.com and servint.com.

    Three of these belong to Cyber Promotions Inc., which tried to get a
restraining order on Friday but the judge has not yet responded. Sanford
Wallace, Cyber Promo President, says AOL may be doing this because they
consider them a competitive threat. "Unlike the pop-up screens that AOL
forces all its members to see before they can get into their accounts,
we're a little more responsible in our position."

    Jeff Slaton, who at one time allegedly was making millions from
spamming, strongly endorsed AOL's decison. He told Mercury Central
"I'm repentant. I've got religion. I see the light now and I'm done with
the old way of spamming. I think AOL is right on target. The Internet is\
the Wild West with no laws and regulations and it's time now for the
community, and that includes me, to start abiding by some code of conduct
to avoid inevitable chaos."

    Strangely enough he plans to spam en masse one more time to get
subscribers to his advertising company that will let people sign up for
no spam, all spam or selected subject spam. (Isn't this basically what
Cyber Promo claims they do now--send only wanted mail?)

    AOL also plans to create a new feature that will let users filter out
unwanted messages themselves. This will be in addition to the options for
clicking 'ignore', deleting or forwarding them to AOL's complaint depart-
ment. (This should be interesting, since there doesn't appear to be a
common factor that's easily software recognizable.)

    There are two flaws to this program. One is that spammers can quickly
and inexpensively acquire a new domain; the other is that it may restrict
legitimate email. But David Phillips, associate general counsel at AOL,
said the company says: "Could it potentially restrict a legitimate E-mail?
Yes. Is that the price that members appear willing to pay to put a limit
on the number of junk E-mails that they receive? I think overwhelmingly
that's the case." (I wonder how many he surveyed and what his methods
were?)

    While Compuserve and Prodigy have allegedly begun a similar program
on the QT, AOL apparently felt that as the leader they had to be more
visible.

    What do you think? Send your comments direct to docdon@pobox.com.

    For more information, visit Mercury Central today at
http://www.sjmercury.com/business/aol904.htm or The New York Times at
http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/0905aol.html


Doc


                       Doctor Don -- Internetist
~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~ 
             Specializing in the diagnosis, prevention and
              treatment of Internet diseases and maladies.
	docdon@pobox.com			+1.757.877.4992
 ***         Member Virginia Peninsula Chamber of Commerce          ***

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