NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article
E-Mail Controls and AOL
Dale Oliver, June 98
d_oliver@swbell.net
(click to email author)


Only after a rather lengthy bit of detective work between Gill Hoellerich and myself did we finally resolve the reason why Gil (and John Clark) consistently were unable to send e-mail to my AOL address from their Juno accounts. Finally, Gil inadvertently dropped a hint in one of his correspondences that led me to the source of the problem.

AOL, in an effort to stem the rising tide of junk e-mails, constantly updates a list of e-mail addresses and hosts which it will automatically refuse e-mail from on behalf of its users. In addition, individual AOL users can add or delete entries from the list.

As it turns out, when I checked the list, juno.com was one of the host names included. If you are a Juno user and want to send e-mail to someone on AOL, or if you are an AOL user and cannot receive e-mail from someone using a different e-mail system or ISP, this is a good place to check before investing a lot of time and energy. (Unless, of course, you enjoy spending several weeks messing around and testing various different hypotheses about e-mail systems and the like, such as Gil and I did.)

In AOL 3.0 and 4.0, the fastest solution is to go to keyword "mail controls" and then select the Setup Mail Controls button. If you have multiple users on your AOL account, indicate which user's mail controls you want to modify, and then you'll arrive at the main mail controls window. From there, simply select the e-mail address you want to remove from the list of choices and press the Remove button below the list.

Alternatively, if you constantly get bombarded by junk e-mail from the same source, use the above process to get to the main mail controls window and then add the e-mail address or host you want to automatically block to the list. You may want to look around at the different AOL mail control options while you're there. You have a surprisingly large amount of control over what you'll accept and from whom.

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