It all began several years ago when a listserv I’m on was infiltrated by someone from the outside. They stole all of the email addresses from the list and signed our emails up for random things. Most, if not all, of those things had an unsubscribe link on them and I could easily stop them from plaguing my inbox. Except for one.

An individual using an AOL email has been sending me propaganda emails to my GMail account for years. Every email I get I report as spam, but the emails still come. I keep reporting them — the emails keep coming. Finally, I reached out to the AOL Support twitter account and asked what I should do.

@AOLSupportHelp hey – I've had this dude who's been spamming me for YEARS from an AOL email. I've done everything including reporting him to the FCC as a spammer to no avail. Is there any way to stop him?

— Sarah Burris (@SarahBurris) March 16, 2018

The reply I got instructed me to forward the emails to the abuse account. So I did. In fact, I forwarded all of them to illustrate the overwhelming amount of spam I’m getting from this American Online email address.

Hi Sarah! Please forward his emails to abuse@aol.com so that we can look into this matter. -AI

— AOL Customer Support (@AOLSupportHelp) March 16, 2018

After a week of forwarding these emails to abuse@aol.com I reached out to the support Twitter again to ask for help. Not only did I not get any help — I didn’t get get a response. The spam emails on the Aol.com server simply keep coming.

Hey just wanted to flag it for you – I've been forwarding the spam emails that the AOL email is sending me to the abuse email and nothing has happened – nor have they stopped

— Sarah Burris (@SarahBurris) March 23, 2018

So, the AOL Support account gave me another suggestion. It’s worth noting that every time I reach out they think I’m an AOL user trying to stop spam in my own email account. Instead, I’m another user on another email server and someone using their AOL.com server is spamming me using one of their accounts.

Hi Sarah, we're sorry to hear the issue is ongoing. Check out this article to learn more about spam controls: https://t.co/7frWaG7fH6 -MD

— AOL Customer Support (@AOLSupportHelp) March 23, 2018

So here's the thing – I'm not an AOL user. The problem is that your user is spamming me at my email address, there's no unsubscribe, requires to be removed have gone unanswered, and it's a violation of the CAN SPAM Act, which I reported to the FCC still to no avail.

— Sarah Burris (@SarahBurris) March 23, 2018

Please check your spam settings in your mail account and add this sender to the block list so they stop bothering you. -MD

— AOL Customer Support (@AOLSupportHelp) March 23, 2018

I did — but they're still being sent, they just end up in a filter in my in box. The account shouldn't be allowed to send emails at all if I've indicated I don't want to receive them and it appears that you're not policing spam violators on your server.

— Sarah Burris (@SarahBurris) March 23, 2018

As you can see, I kept trying to explain to them that no matter what I do, the emails continue to come. No amount of spam reporting works. Plus, there’s the principle of the matter. Spam is a violation of AOL’s terms of service. Yet, when it is reported that someone is using their AOL.com email to spam people, those accounts aren’t shut down.

I kept following the @AOLSupport’s instructions and kept forwarding to spam@aol.com and tosgeneral@aol.com. Despite being spam and despite being a violation of TOS, they did nothing — until today.

Today my Gmail account got shut down because they received complaints I was spamming someone. Let’s see — who would I have been spamming? You guessed it — AOL. So, AOL considers me forwarded just a fraction of the emails I’m getting from THEIR spammer to be a spam violation and they’ll take action against ME, but they won’t take action against someone on their own server.

Now, I’m on the phone with Google support and I’m pretty sure he’s as flabbergasted as I am. How could you not be?

I reached out to the @AOLSupport twitter account asking for a Public Relations person to ask for comment but received no answer. I googled around but every time I try to go to the AOL corporate website it sends me to some Oath.com site, which gets me nowhere. So, if someone from American Online would care to comment please feel free to contact me in the comments below, since I have no access to my email.