AOL scomp

Tue Mar 1 15:27:38 UTC 2005

Once upon a time, Jim Segrave <jes at nl.demon.net> said:
> I don't understand this complaint - we process AOL TOS Notifications
> daily and I find perhaps 1 in a hundred or so are not valid complaints.

It is almost the reverse for us; a small number of valid complaints in a
sea of false complaints.  I've seen account info, half of private
conversations (and I do mean private), hotel reservations, and more
reported as spam on a regular basis.

I also get complaints about confirmed opt-in mailing lists (majordomo
and/or mailman lists with unsubscribe info at the bottom of each
message) that the user apparently thinks the "Spam" button is the same
as unsubscribe.  That does not scale up; the whole point of using
mailing list software is that so the mail server admin doesn't have to
manually process subscribe/unsubscribe lists.  Our mailing lists are set
up to "bulk mail" (i.e. one message with multiple recipients), so since
AOL filters out the complaining address, I can't manually unsubscribe
those users.

I haven't seen the AOL interface myself, but I've read that the "Spam"
button is next to or near the "Delete" button, leading to mis-clicks.
Even if that isn't so, there are definately a significant number of
users that use the buttons interchangeably.
-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.