AOL Revises Spam Controls
AOL Revises Spam Controls — According to a story on News.com, America Online has changed how users can control what email they receive. Prior to this, AOL’s PreferredMail option allowed AOL subscribers to opt in or out of banning mail from a large list of domains and addresses that AOL constantly modified. Critics of this filtering process noted that some sites were being added incorrectly, mail server hijacking being a key reason for the mis-identification of a spam’s origin. The new filter, called Mail Controls, enables users to specify their own banned or accepted domains and IP addresses, block attachments, choose to receive mail only from other AOL members, from other online services, or from a specific list of addresses or domains. Although the one-at-a-time interface makes it difficult to create and manage anything but the simplest mail filters, these controls have the finest granularity of any major service provider or commercial service, and will hopefully improve in the future. [GF]
<http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,15787,00.html>