# AOL and the Darwin Awards **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 17, 2004, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570 "2004-07-17T12:26:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2004, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570/21 "2004-07-17T16:40:04Z")
**tomndebb** , does AOL handle SPAM the way I described in post #9? ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2004, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570/22 "2004-07-17T17:11:08Z")
> [@Revtim](#): > > **tomndebb** , does AOL handle SPAM the way I described in post #9? A friend of mine was not receiving mail from her family in China–it wasn’t even making the spam folder–so it looks like that’s not the only filter in place. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2004, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570/23 "2004-07-17T17:14:03Z")
Thanks **ultra**. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2004, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570/24 "2004-07-17T18:20:15Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > However, in the interest of getting the Straight Dope, I have entered an AOL account into their newsletter subscription. I will let you know whether I get any response. As a control, I added my gmail address to the list. But, I haven’t even got a confirmation yet, and it’s been maybe ten minutes. (I’ve checked my SPAM folder). ---
**Author:** ![Dan\_Norder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4af34b/32.png) [@Dan\_Norder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dan_Norder)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2004, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570/25 "2004-07-17T20:34:44Z")
I’m on AOL (hey, it’s free for CLs, and it is more reliable than the local ISPs I tried), so I’ve had some first hand experience with this. I’m also a webmaster who sends out emails for various reasons. I’ve had some mail from some of my domains go missing when it’s sent to AOL addresses, but then, for the most part, I know why. For one thing, AOL uses a lot of methods to try to determine what’s spam and what isn’t, as it’s the single largest target for attempted spam attacks. One of the most important and chaotic ways of labeling spam is the option to let the members label mail that comes into their mailboxes as spam. Tons of people sign up for newsletters (often unknowingly, as some websites just do it for you automatically with out of the way check boxes set to spamtastic by default) and then label them as spam when they come in because they either don’t read them or don’t want to go through the hoops to unsubscribe. (And considering the amount of spam with fake unsubscribe directions that actually just get you targetted for even more spam, I can’t say I blame them.) Another is that they check IP addresses that the mail was sent from and compare it to the domain. If they get enough mail that looks suspicious that way it’s automatically canned. So often you’ll have somebody at a website sending email from their ISP instead of from where their site is hosted. That’s reminiscent of forged headers, and lots of places weight that as potential spam. There’s also the recent U.S. CAN SPAM act, which explicitly requires specific information in the emails that are sent out. Lots of places haven’t bothered to try to comply with that, so they get banned. There are any number of ways batch bunches of email can get banned. If you do mass mailings to AOL, you should go read their pages about how to do it properly, not sit and whine and complain about it like a lot of these places do. Even then, problems will probably crop up now and then, but then I’ve seen the same thing happen at lots of other ISPs and email providers. Yahoo! is notorious for blocking newsletters that never even make it to the user’s spam folder, as one example. And lots of people subscribe to the Blackhole list, which is often very reactionary and can ban whole blocks of IP addresses based upon some spam (or alleged spam) from one simple address in the larger series. If your IP happens to be adjacent to one of these, even if you don’t use the same host, and are in a different area, and so forth, you are out of luck until you can get them to unblock you. As time goes on, I think people will have to move over to a different email protocol if we want to have a reasonably good chance of having mail delivered reliably. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2004, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570/26 "2004-07-17T21:01:18Z")
It’s been nearly four hours, and I still haven’t got confirmation in my gmail account. It… must… be… CENSORSHIP!!! 😉 I sent an email to [subscribe@darwinawards.com](mailto:subscribe@darwinawards.com), maybe that will work. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2004, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570/27 "2004-07-17T21:02:40Z")
Dammit, it bounced. To hell with it. ---
**Author:** ![Rex\_Fenestrarum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rex_fenestrarum/32/7265_2.png) [@Rex\_Fenestrarum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rex_Fenestrarum)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2004, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570/28 "2004-07-17T21:02:52Z")
I thought that the main problem with AOL was that they were big on “domain blocking” - where they tell their mail servers to reject or drop any emails from… say [straightdope.com](http://straightdope.com) - instead of something more intelligent, like filtering. I know that every so often AOL screws up and blocks an entire ISP just because of one spammer… ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2004, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570/29 "2004-07-17T21:37:45Z")
> [@Revtim](#): > > It’s been nearly four hours, and I still haven’t got confirmation in my gmail account. > > It… must… be… > CENSORSHIP!!! > > 😉 That means Steve Case must be walking around wearing… Jackboots! Straight out of the closet of… Josef Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler! ---
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2004, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570/30 "2004-07-17T21:55:10Z")
> [@](#): > > That means Steve Case must be walking around wearing… Whatever shoes he wants. He resigned as chairman and ceo of AOL in jan 2003 ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2004, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570/31 "2004-07-17T22:02:54Z")
> [@Reeder](#): > > Whatever shoes he wants. > > He resigned as chairman and ceo of AOL in jan 2003 He wants you to _think_ he resigned as chairman and ceo of AOL in Jan 2003. ---
**Author:** ![Go\_You\_Big\_Red\_Fire\_Engine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/eada6e/32.png) [@Go\_You\_Big\_Red\_Fire\_Engine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_You_Big_Red_Fire_Engine)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2004, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570/32 "2004-07-18T04:52:58Z")
hmmmm :dubious: The mystery deepens. I don’t think a webmaster of such a large site, that is the Darwin Awards would be so susceptible to knee jerk reactions, but that’s just my impression. I guess if people have been clickety clicking the spam button though, it would make sense to get other people to say they wanted the mail, like they did on the site. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Shade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2bfe46/32.png) [@Shade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shade)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2004, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570/33 "2004-07-18T12:26:31Z")
Well, it presumably can’t be a 1st Ammendment violation because it’s not the government doing it. It might be false advertising or something - if you pay someone to receive your email you’d be justified in assuming they would, rather than hiding it. I’m guessing it’s an over-active spam filter. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone was a bit hasty in allowing sex and violence words to mark spam, assuming that there wouldn’t be any legitimate emails with them. Possible? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aol-and-the-darwin-awards/255570.md?page=1)