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AOL 9.0 Email Settings

America Online (AOL) recently released the newest version of its product, AOL 9.0 Optimized. They have simultaneously launched an aggressive marketing campaign to encourage users to upgrade as soon as possible.

Protecting its users from unsolicited commercial email (spam) is one of AOL’s main reasons for the release of 9.0. That's the good news. The bad news is that if you're using AOL 9.0, you're more likely than ever to have some "legitimate" mail blocked, and that may include (horror of horrors!) Mr. Modem's Weekly Newsletter.

In an effort to fight spam, AOL has taken the fairly drastic, quasi hysterical measure of blocking all graphics from being displayed in HTML emails, as well as disabling links contained in any message sent to an AOL 9.0 inbox. This has been implemented to put the control back into the hands of the account holder, not the spammers.

Ideally, AOL wants users to “customize” their own inbox and view or receive only the messages they choose to receive. The system is also designed to “learn” what messages are repeatedly marked as spam so they will eventually be automatically sent to the Junk Folder once 9.0 memorizes the account holder’s preferences.

While AOL has put these measures in place to curb spam, it’s evident that they can have a negative impact on legitimate emailers. For example, my weekly newsletters do contain HTML links to Web sites and other resources of interest.

What You Need To Do

When an email is received by AOL 9.0, users will have to click a link at the top of each message (“Show Images & Enable Links”) to view any graphics within the email. If this action is not taken, images (i.e. pictures, logos, graphics) and links will not be displayed or enabled.

Even though this is the default setting for AOL 9.0, you do have the ability to add a sender’s "From:" Address into your address book which AOL classifies as “People I Know”.

Once this has been done, all emails received from this address in the future will automatically have images and links functioning as normal as a recognized sender. So please be sure to add MrModem@mrmodem.net to your AOL address book as "People I Know and Love." Well, maybe that's overstating it. "People I know" will be fine. :-)

If You Don't Receive An Issue

I added a feature to my Web site that allows you to retrieve the current week's newsletter should you not be able to receive it via email, thanks to AOL. To access the current week's newsletter, please click HERE.

Enter your newsletter delivery email address in the Address field and click the "View this week's newsletter now" button. The current week's newsletter will appear on screen and you can then either print it or click File > Save As and save it as an .htm document on your computer. If you receive a message from your browser advising that it may not save properly, just click Yes, and proceed to save it. It should save just fine.

This feature is available to you any time you cannot retrieve your issue from your ISP, so you might want to bookmark the above Web site address for future reference, or contact me and I'll be happy to provide it to you again.

For security purposes, you will only be able to access any week's newsletter one time using this method, but at least it will be accessible to you any time AOL rears its ugly head and decides to interfere.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Mr. M.

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