Why is AOL Spam Filtering so shitty?

jose melendez

Earl of Acie
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Oct 23, 2003
30,970
Geneva, Switzerland
I ask this because I'm curious. I've long since abandoned aol. But it blows my mind, every day my old account catches maybe 70 spam messages but lets through approximately a billion more. GMail has nothing resembling this

I've done a little searching but haven't found an explaination. Does AOL accept money to let some spam through? Are they just massively incompetant? What's the story?
 

zenter

indian sweet
SoSH Member
Oct 11, 2005
5,641
Astoria, NY
Putting aside quality of spam filtering, abandoned email boxes tend to get a lot more spam because you never mark stuff as spam. On Gmail, I mark about a message or two a day, which means I'm preventing literally hundreds of future spam messages. The same is true for Yahoo (if you abandon it, which I did).
 

Blacken

Robespierre in a Cape
SoSH Member
Jul 24, 2007
12,152
Turn it around, Jose: why would they care? All of 12 people use it, and 11 of them are grandmas who are just happy to have someone who writes to them. :buddy:
 

AlNipper49

Huge Member
Dope
SoSH Member
Apr 3, 2001
44,851
Mtigawi
I ask this because I'm curious. I've long since abandoned aol. But it blows my mind, every day my old account catches maybe 70 spam messages but lets through approximately a billion more. GMail has nothing resembling this

I've done a little searching but haven't found an explaination. Does AOL accept money to let some spam through? Are they just massively incompetant? What's the story?
AOL has the worst spam filtering known to man. Popular misconceptions aside, a significant amount of people still use it and without question, and there isn't even a close second, we get more questions about emails not being delivered to AOL.com addresses than any other provider. So not only does spam get through but we see the legitimate stuff get killed.
 

jose melendez

Earl of Acie
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Oct 23, 2003
30,970
Geneva, Switzerland
AOL has the worst spam filtering known to man. Popular misconceptions aside, a significant amount of people still use it and without question, and there isn't even a close second, we get more questions about emails not being delivered to AOL.com addresses than any other provider. So not only does spam get through but we see the legitimate stuff get killed.
I only quit it about a year ago. I had a first initial last name address and I'd always used it. So glad I changed. Funny thing though, when it wasn't abandoned it was still horrible. I'd mark things as spam and then get the same shit the next day (Yoshiblade!). It was having messages from my girlfriend not reach me that finally pushed me over. I realized that if it had filtered the "I want to go on a second date" email from her, AOL would have ruined my life.

But why does it suck so much nip?
 

Nick Kaufman

protector of human kind from spoilers
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Aug 2, 2003
13,410
A Lost Time
I only quit it about a year ago. I had a first initial last name address and I'd always used it. So glad I changed. Funny thing though, when it wasn't abandoned it was still horrible. I'd mark things as spam and then get the same shit the next day (Yoshiblade!). It was having messages from my girlfriend not reach me that finally pushed me over. I realized that if it had filtered the "I want to go on a second date" email from her, AOL would have ruined my life.

But why does it suck so much nip?
Yup. Same experience for me, I ve kept my AOL accounts for legacy purposes. Kept marking messages as spam, they kept getting delivered. I had more luck with using outlook filters, by seriously that's a hell of a hassle.
 

AlNipper49

Huge Member
Dope
SoSH Member
Apr 3, 2001
44,851
Mtigawi
I only quit it about a year ago. I had a first initial last name address and I'd always used it. So glad I changed. Funny thing though, when it wasn't abandoned it was still horrible. I'd mark things as spam and then get the same shit the next day (Yoshiblade!). It was having messages from my girlfriend not reach me that finally pushed me over. I realized that if it had filtered the "I want to go on a second date" email from her, AOL would have ruined my life.

But why does it suck so much nip?
The simple answer is the people who want to break the rules have more incentive to continually innovate than AOL does in continuing to fight it.

AOL sucks in that all they need(ed) to do is outsource this (or buy-source it like google did) but their financials suck I guess. This is probably the best sign they are not long for this world, simply put all signs point to them squeezing the last remaining dimes out of their remaining business.
 

bosoxgrl

big fan of Seamen
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
May 31, 2005
2,630
The deep end of the ocean
I pulled this thread up hoping someone can answer.   I only keep my AOL account open for shopping kinds of stuff.  I have a separate gmail for business stuff and a Hotmail for personal emails.  Anyway, something has gotten through my AOL filters.  I keep receiving tons of spam in my inbox and the message source says "bounce.listenernetwork.com.   They keep using different email address to send out their spam and I can't figure out how to stop this.  Can anyone help me?