NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Administrivia: AOL subs cut off for about a week now restored
Administrivia: AOL subs cut off for about a week now restored Back on 6 April, in "Administrivia: All AOL addresses may be removed from this mailing list" ( http://j.mp/fl9yoj [NNSquad] ) I noted that all AOL subscribers to my various lists had been cut off due to arbitrary (and I suspected ridiculous) blocking actions by AOL, despite my longstanding participation in their whitelist program. It took me several days to even reach the AOL postmaster by working through a veritable maze of AOL problem submission forms. When I finally did reach a human and had a direct address, I found the postmaster to be professional, communicative, and certainly willing to work at clearing up the situation. However, even from that point forward, actually removing the various AOL blocks took many more messages back and forth, more forms, and up to 24 hour delays after each iteration. It wasn't until this morning that all blocks apparently were clear. The upshot of all this is that AOL subscribers should now be receiving all mail directed at them from my servers. However, the blocks themselves were triggered by what I would characterize as such inane AOL policy procedures that a repeat performance of the blocking could potentially happen again at any time. So despite the cooperation of the AOL postmaster in removing the blocks, there was no reasonable logic to the blocks having been deployed (and with no warning to me at all) in the first place. I will keep all AOL subscribers on the lists for now. But I very strongly urge AOL subscribers to switch to another mail service as soon as possible, unless you're satisfied with having lists to which you have subscribed being cut off for days or longer by essentially arbitrary AOL actions. I understand the inertia that plays against changing email addresses. I've been using lauren@vortex.com since the Early Cretaceous Period and I'd certainly be uncomfortable myself with changing it now. But successfully receiving email through AOL seems to have turned into quite a challenge, and with various free alternatives such as Gmail and others available, sticking with AOL email at this point would be something of a Roach Motel philosophy in action. Any future serious blocking problems with AOL may well actually trigger the removal of AOL addresses that I was earlier contemplating. I'm really not willing to go through this much hassle with AOL repeatedly. We now return you to your regularly scheduled bandwidth caps. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Google Buzz: http://j.mp/laurenbuzz Quora: http://www.quora.com/Lauren-Weinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com