In the last Supernova story I opined about how bad TV advertising is. The broadcast networks are not the only culprits who are bombarding us with their messages. In fact one of the worst perpetrators is AOL. Millions of people use AOL for their email service. No problem with that but AOL appends an ad at the end of every email their users send. I got an email from a fellow board member this morning and the epilogue said "Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for fuel-efficient used cars.". How bad is that? My distinguished colleague sending me used car ads!
This is a classic case of Opt In vs. Opt Out. When you get an AOL email account, they automatically Opt you In to include advertising at the end of your emails. It is possible to Opt Out but it isn’t easy. They intentionally make it hard or at least do not intentionally make it easy. I asked my friend if he realized he was being "used" as a carrier for AOL advertising — for which they are getting paid and he isn’t. Like many others that I have asked that same question, his response was "I am aware and very annoyed by it but don’t know how to get rid of it". I decided to do some research to see if I could help reduce the AOL spam from our inboxes and outboxes. The simple answer is for AOL users to click here and then uncheck the check box and click save. Three simple mouse clicks and a lot of senders and receivers will be happy.
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