Having been in the position of speaking with the director of anti-spam operations at AOL in the past, I can tell you that the man acts with the best of intentions in mind. he's a good guy, a nice person, and a reasonable man. That's why I feel bad when I criticize the latest tactic against spam at AOL.

This article, all be it brief, describes AOL's new effort. Now, I do understand part of the concept. Spam mailers embed tags and graphics and the like into their e-mails. These graphics and bugs have call back features that are capable of gathering data about who reads the message, where they are, what ISP they use, so on and so forth. So by blocking known spam sites, they run a good chance of blocking these call back features. If they do, they might decrease the size of the target on AOL's back for spamming. Good concept. Interesting idea.

Here's the part where I disagree. The nondescript error message bothers me. The fact that AOL members aren't being told that the site is being blocked due to spam concerns me. These are the people who are supposed to have submitted sufficient complaints against the site to have had it blocked in the first place. To deny the users the opportunity to question this decision and vote on it being a legitimate site is frustrating. When an e-mail server is blocked by AOL due to spam use, an error message is returned to the sender explaining it. This error message, should it reach the user's sysadmin, can be used as notification to the site that they're being blocked. It is a warning to the sysadmin to let them know to get in touch with AOL and find out what's going on, why they're blocked, and what they can do to resolve the issue. Something like this in the error, allowing the AOL users to inform AOL of legitimacy or contact the offending site, would benefit everyone involved.

One man's opinion.