How do I complain to AOL

[BusyB]

I am not an AOL customer but I keep getting spam emails from AOL purporting to come from a deceased friends email address.

I can't seem to contact AOL as I am not a customer:sad:

[toolowtoofast]

Block the address?

[Mike-Bracknell]

It's not necessarily FROM AOL, just purporting to be from them. Complaining to AOL won't get you anywhere.

You just have to block the email address at your incoming spam filter. You *have* got one of those, haven't you?

[Capetonian]

AOL do not respond to that type of complaint. I used to report scammers using AOL addresses to them and they never replied, nor shut down the offending email addresses.

Waste of space. Just block the addresses or even the whole bloody domain and move on!

[vulcanised]

I'm regularly seeing something via AOL in my preview from 'Kokokev'.

Never opened it so don't know whether it's spam or virus.

[call100]

Leave AOL!!!:}

[Keef]

Sadly, in this modern age when over 90% of e-mail is scam or spam, you need a mail filter. Sooner or later, any address you use will get into the spammers hands - often through your being in someone else's address book when their PC is compromised by a harvester bot virus (and so on, ad infinitum).

Most decent ISPs provide mail filtering of one sort or another, which will separate the junk into a folder where you can look at it via your web browser and decide what to zap (usually all of it). You can get similar services from Spamcop (excellent, but US$30 a year) or Gmail (free) - you arrange for your mail to forward to them, or set Spamcop to poll your POP server and collect the mail, filter it, and forward the genuine stuff to a different e-mail address.

Don't faff about with those spamcatchers that live on your PC - you have to download the stuff to check it, which defeats half the point.
And don't bother with the ones that write back to the sender asking him to fill in a form: many people don't bother, or the form gets trapped in their spam filter and never seen.

[BOAC]

Leave AOL!!! - indeed - the best way to complain to them, but watch they don't carry on charging you!

[islander539]

"I can't seem to contact AOL as I am not a customer"

How can he leave AOL if he is not a member?

[BOAC]

Good point!:)

[BusyB]

Thanks guys. Yes, I can auto junk it but I wanted to stop it at source to prevent my friends name being spammed around the web:mad:

[Mike-Bracknell]

Way.......WAY too late for that. :ugh:

[In rerum natura]

I have found myself saying some strange things recently: I am extremely satisfied with BT; I have a profound respect for those talented enough to be employed at Redmond; and, finally, I quite like AOL. I wound up with AOL by chance: the CompuServe floppy disk installation failed and Demon were too expensive; AOL 3 installed on Windows 3.1 perfectly. Sadly, AOL is not what it was in its heyday here in the UK; then it was the cheapest dial-up provider with an extremely easy to use and intuitive e-mail client and the bonuses of Usenet feeds, chat rooms supervised by Community Leaders and so on. I used to install AOL on friends' machines almost as a matter of course. The e-mail front end is still usable if you set up Internet Explorer correctly:

IE Security -> Internet -> Custom Level ->
ActiveX: Disable ActiveX Controls
Scripting: Disable Active Scripting

That kills most of the horrible Flash annoyances (I pay 19.99 GBP pcm, do I have to watch the adverts as well, Charles?) and makes the e-mail client usable again. I also disable Pictures &c. in the Advanced IE menu.

AOL's spam filters are extremely effective although one curiosity (which I haven't seen lately) was receiving spam purportedly from one's own AOL e-mail address.

My understanding is that now anyone can set up and use an AOL e-mail address (as was the case with AIM), whether they are paying a sub or not. Whether the friend's Screen Name has been hijacked, is being spoofed or is simply a near identical clone (old Screen Names used to remain unavailable for a couple of years after deletion) is beyond my extremely limited knowledge. If there is an extant contract with AOL then I suppose it's up to the executors to intervene. If sufficient (and it's a fairly low number) AOL users report a Screen Name as generating spam (a simple button press) then the account is suspended.

I recently received a cold call from TalkTalk (I dialled 1471/*69 after the call terminated) claiming to be AOL and trying to sell me a new broadband package. To my knowledge TalkTalk are no longer part of the CPW group. When the caller asked me for my postcode I said "You tell me" and the line immediately went dead. You may draw your own inferences re data leaks.

IRN