Internet service provider AOL has come under fire after it emerged that the company was blocking e-mails critical of its services.
Users discovered that AOL was screening out messages that included a link to DearAOL.com -- a Web site which campaigns against recent decisions made by the ISP -- after realizing that such e-mails were mysteriously failing to reach their destination. ISPs provide customers with a connection to the Internet.
After the complaints began to appear, DearAOL's backers began to test the problem for themselves.
"I tried to e-mail my brother-in-law about DearAOL.com and AOL sent me a response as if he had disappeared," said Wes Boyd, a backer of the site. "But when I sent him an e-mail without the link, it went right through."
Some activists say that e-mail censorship is a problem which could affect millions of people without their knowledge.
"The fact is ISPs like AOL commonly make these kinds of arbitrary decisions -- silently banning huge swaths of legitimate mail on the flimsiest of reasons," said Danny O'Brien, a spokesman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights campaign group.
AOL, which has around 20 million subscribers in the US and more than 2 million in the UK, insisted that it had not actively censored the e-mails.
"We've been accurately and responsibly delivering tens of millions of e-mails containing that Web link, and we will continue to do so," said Nicholas Graham, a spokesman for the company.
Graham blamed a "software glitch" for the problem, and said DearAOL had been mistakenly identified as a site run by e-mail spammers. Like most ISPs, AOL runs a filtering program to try to prevent unwanted messages clogging up users' inboxes. Technicians fixed the block within 24 hours.
* Your employer has the right to read any e-mail you send from work, and many companies will automatically filter your mail before it arrives to prevent spam.
* Your Internet service provider has access to any e-mail you send from a private account. It will usually filter it for unwanted messages.
* If you use a Web-based e-mail account like Google mail or Microsoft's Hotmail, your ISP cannot read your e-mail but the e-mail provider can. The Google mail program will scan your messages to place appropriate advertising on to your screen. The advertisers, however, cannot read your mail.
* Law enforcement agencies have the right to read your e-mail if a warrant has been issued. Any ISP in Europe is now legally obliged to keep track of your e-mail and Internet use for potential investigation by the security services.
Source: The Guardian
DearAOL.com consists of an open letter that attacks the company's decision to begin charging to deliver some e-mail. The plans, announced in February, will introduce a special tariff that companies or individuals can pay to guarantee that an e-mail will bypass spam filtering systems. It is thought the system will cost between US$2.50 and US$10 per thousand e-mails. Other providers such as Yahoo are considering the system, but it has yet to be implemented.
"This system would create a two-tiered Internet in which affluent mass e-mailers could pay AOL a fee that amounts to an `e-mail tax' for every e-mail sent," says the letter, which has gained more than 350,000 signatories since it was launched two months ago.
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