AOL 9.0 = more spam?

On one of our computers (the other doesn’t have enough disk space) my wife upgraded us to AOL 9.0 Optimized. Ever since I’ve been getting lots of spam, whereas before I never really got it that often.
The funny thing is, about 99% of the spam either has in their title something about patches, virus alerts, upgrades and so on, or I get a bunch of “unable to deliver” messages basically telling me that I supposedly sent out an e-mail to an invalid address.
And like I said, I only started getting these after switching to AOL 9.0.
So, has anybody else had this same problem? Any ideas on why it’s happening?
Thanks.

Chances are it’s coincidence, but it sounds like your screen name has been hijacked. This probably has nothing to do with the AOL upgrade but someone may be using your e-mail address to “spoof” spam and, since your e-mail is being spread all over, it’s being targeted for spam also.

AOL 9 actually has some improved capability to screen out spam - bringing it up to where all the other e-mail clients were 5 or 6 years ago. The real solution is to ditch AOL and get another ISP. No matter how much AOL says they are interested in fighting spam, their policies make it easier:

  1. They make you use a screen name instead of a nickname when you post on AOL forums.
  2. They make you use your screen name as part of your home page address if you use the AOL home page feature.
  3. They are so big, random trolling yields valid addresses much easier than any other ISP.

I’ve created AOL screen names and then never used them - for anything. Within a period of months, they start to pick up spam. For the life of me I can’t figure out how. In constrast, I’ve had other e-mails with small ISP’s and my own domain and I never get spam.

When did you do this update? I started getting some “From Microsoft” crap spam virus junk about a week ago and I didn’t install AOL or anything. I just chalked it up to a new wave of spam.

Unfortunately I may have to vote for “it’s not AOL’s fault” on this one. :-o

We upgraded last Saturday (9/22) I think.
Maybe it is coincidence, but I find it funny that I only started getting wave after wave of spam after upgrading.
Also, if you name gets hijacked and used as “spamaflauge” is there anything you can do about it?

You should inform AOL you suspect this and see if they can track it down. Forward to them some of the “undeliverable” messages that you didn’t initiate.

OK thanks.