[DeTomaso] Missing Message

[msm at portata.com]

"a substantial population still relies on AOL"

You have AOL confused with AARP.  It is an easy mistake as they are basically the same group.


A bit of background on email -- when you send email to another person, your email message first goes to a computer (server) near where you are.  That server then routes your email to another server.  That server in-turn routes it to another server, and so on.  Your message may go through a dozen or more servers as it travels across the county or overseas.  It finally is routed to a server near your recipient then to the recipient's PC.  In many ways, the Internet works much like the pony express in how it routes mails from one rider to the next.  I think AOL still uses actual horses to deliver email.

The servers through which your email passes are owned by various private, public, and governmental organizations.  Each server checks your email.  If it decides that your email is spam, it will just simply drop it without notification.  The servers owned by AOL are particularly picky about what is and is not spam.  

The actual route your email takes as it hops across the country depends on traffic congestion.  The messages are automatically routed via the servers that are least congested at that time.  It is luck of the draw as to which servers you get an how picky they are.  This is why some emails are dropped and others are not.

Finally, your PC/Mac has its own set of rules about what it considers to be spam.  If it decides that a message is spam, it will automatically move it to your spam AKA junk folder.

If a message is in your spam folder, it was your PC/Mac that put it there.  If a message never arrives, some server along the way dropped it.  That server may or may not be owned by AOL.  You have little recourse over dropped messages.


Yes, it is trivially easy for the NSA to scan billions of messages every day.



________________________________________
From: DeTomaso [detomaso-bounces at poca.com] On Behalf Of MikeLDrew at aol.com [MikeLDrew at aol.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2014 9:44 AM
To: kirby.schrader at gmail.com
Cc: detomaso at poca.com; thedrol at pobox.com
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Missing Message

In a message dated 5/8/14 9 16 42, kirby.schrader at gmail.com writes:


> But this is just me and gmail. If you're not gmail, then I don't know why
> the messages are 'disappearing'.
>

>>>I don't think this is a Gmail thing.

I think that when a message comes from AOL to the forum, the list software
does *something* to that message, and when it is forwarded on, it takes on
the appearance of evil.

Some e-mail providers are then sending these messages to the user's spam
folder, where the user can fish them out manually, while others allow them to
proceed unhindered to the user's inbox.

Ironically, it appears that AOL is being even more aggressive, and
filtering them out even before they make it as far as a spam folder, so AOL users
are unable to see any messages sent to the forum by themselves, or other AOL
users?

I can tell you this--it has cut down on forum traffic to my inbox quite a
bit, because a substantial population still relies on AOL....

Mike