gmail

AOL allows spammers to run rampant on their server and they’ll report you if you complain too much

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

blocked from google after reporting spam

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.

Facebooktwitterpinterestrssvimeotumblrinstagramflickr