Most people who know their way around communicating on the web understand that most free email services result in receiving unwanted email (spam).Over the years, two services have become well known for being major targets for spammers, Microsoft’s Hotmail and AOL. A few months ago I received an invite to beta test AOL’s latest webmail update, codenamed Project Phoenix, and decided to give it a try. My findings were pretty much what I expected. Unfortunately.
Project Phoenix (AOL Mail) is a decidedly cool service at first glance. While the basic concept of email remains unchanged, the features AOL added into the mix and the somewhat attractive interface make the service appear to be a great alternative to other webmail services. Project Phoenix not only allows you to quickly send email, but you can also send text messages, post to Facebook and Twitter, and chat with friends on the AIM network. You can also use it to check Gmail and Yahoo email. I won’t go into a whole lot of detail, because that’s not the point of this article.
After signing up and adding a single email and phone number to my Project Phoenix address book, I pretty much ignored it for months – checking only periodically to see if any new features found their way into the service. Other than a single email sent to my Gmail address, I never sent an email to anyone, nor did I provide the email address I created to anyone or any website. Keep those two facts in mind.
AOL email is a spammer's paradise
Over the course of several months, I noticed a steady increase in the amount of email I was receiving at my new AOL email address. All of it was spam, from a variety of different sites and services ranging from Viagra, insurance and recipes, to airline rewards and home makeover sites. A few days ago I checked the site again and found that I had hundreds of emails in the inbox, and dozens more that AOL’s spam filter actually did catch as spam.
In this day and age, I’m shocked that this sort of breach of trust still goes on with such a large company. No email service is exempt from receiving spam, but my Gmail, Yahoo, and personal domain email have never received the volume of spam that the AOL email account does – and I actually use those other services.
The moral of this story is simply to do your research when signing up for services on the web, particularly email services that you will depend on for day-to-day communication. Many sites gain a reputation for good reason. In this case, AOL has apparently done nothing to shed it’s bad rep – at least in my case anyway.