AOL Rant & Why
I'm going to start this by providing a disclaimer. If you like AoL,
good for you. That is a decision you get to make all on your own. I,
however, feel differently, and am going to state my "opinions". There is
absolutely no reason to read on if you're going to become offended for my logic.
Save yourself some stress, and just don't do it.
Okay, the other day I promised to touch base on why I dislike AoL as much as
I do. I will attempt to make this as brief as possible, but please note
that my dislike has come from hours and hours of dealing with issues caused by
AoL. Now, I don't think any Internet provider is inherently bad. I
do think there are things that make them bad. AoL, in particular, causes
things that drive me absolutely crazy. This is brought on by having to
deal with AoL customers on a daily basis. Now these people aren't always
stupid people, but AoL has done things that I'm convinced make Internet users
(for a lack of a better term) stupid.
Lets start the list with the Spam folder. Spam is something that we all
deal with, and no I'm not referring to the nasty stuff that comes in a can and
pretends to be some form of meat. Junk mail promoting absolutely
everything under the sun (most not family friendly), filters into our inboxes on
a daily basis. Now spam control is something that filtering can help, and
I'm not against filtering it at all. In fact Thank You YAHOO and GMAIL!
They have made my life soo much easier. They honestly filter almost all of
my spam into the right folder. GMAIL as far as I can tell does a better
job, but I really have no complaints on either. AoL however doesn't tell
their customers anything about the spam folder. They promote filtration of
spam as well, but do three things that annoy the hell out of me.
1. They hide the spam folder
2. They don't tell customers anything (as far as I can tell) about the fact
that it even exists.
3. They filter emails from legitimate companies, and then tell customers
point blank that they don't.
ISP's in general filter emails. They do this, in many cases, before the
client even gets them. They don't, however, always tell you they're doing
it. When you call their "tech support" they, of course, know nothing about
it and many times insist they aren't doing it. I know for a fact that this
isn't the case, and that most emails not received are not received because of
these filters. Most ISP's have a blacklist. These are a list of IP
addresses, email addresses, company names, etc that they filter. (The type of
filtration depends on the ISP in question, so I'm just giving an overview).
So why, oh why when the customer has gone to the trouble of setting up a Yahoo,
Hotmail, Gmail, etc account do they get the email within minutes? Simple,
because ISP tech people don't know squat or aren't going to admit it.
There is NO reason why you should be able to receive an email on one account
from a different ISP instead of another UNLESS there is a filter one the one you
didn't' receive. Now granted, email is a BEST EFFORT system.
This means that no email is 100% guaranteed. Things happen. Things
get lost in cyberspace. I think it's kind of like my car keys effect, only
when things are lost in cyberspace they're pretty much generally just never
going to re-appear. My keys I can go find, though it generally takes me 20
minutes to manage to figure out what I've done with them. It's too bad the
same can't be said for emails. *shrug*
I digress, I'm not referring to all ISP's here, I'm referring to AOL.
AOL also teaches people to be internet idiots. Most AoL users don't even know
what an address bar is. They don't know how to copy and paste (no not all
things will drag and drop into another space... dragging and dropping is not
copying and pasting..... trust me). They type something in the "address" bar and
get a list of related pages. What does this tell me? Simple it's not
a bloody address bar. If you type something an address bar you should get the
webpage specified. Not a freaking list of "possible" choices.
The other thing that somewhat annoys me is that AOL is just a skin for
Internet Explorer. Underneath it all, you still have Internet Explorer
commands, properties, etc. The other thing that boggles my mind, is that
AOL will actually give and help the customers disable any other browser.
This is, as they say, for your safety. My opinion... get a real browser.
I personally like Maxthon,
Mozilla FireFox,
Opera,
and
Internet Explorer. I also like them in that order. I don't like Netscape
because to me it always feels horribly bloated, and unstable. Of course
AOL did buy Netscape, so take that where you want. I feel the same way about
AOL as a browser, though as far as I can tell AOL is considerably more stable. I just don't like the
fact that it infests my computer like a virus.
Getting rid of AOL and all it's "security" makes me feel like re-formatting
may be the easier way to go. There was a time, not that long ago that AOL
must have done an update of some type with "security". I got tons of calls
regarding customers not being able to get to our site. Well the company I
work for has a secure site. We require 128 bit encryption, etc. Well low
and behold they can't get to ANY secure site. They also can't download
another browser, or anything else for that matter. Any software that
prevents me from doing the most basic thing, and control my own settings, drives
me absolutely bats. In fact if it does do something like that it's
probably going to be removed pretty darn fast. Security updates should not
include altering a customers existing settings without telling them specifically
what it's doing. I even removed Norton Security because when you disable the
firewall it disables the ability to process cookies. Cookies are a part of life,
many different sites require them for various reasons. Cookies are also
just pieces of information that are stored on your computer. You can get
rid of them any time you want. I recommend at LEAST every 60 days. Maxthon
has an option that will allow you to delete them, your history, etc every time
you close out of the browser. (There is a reason I like the browser after
all).
Another thing that I think is completely inconvenient is AOL disables
hyperlinks in their emails. WHY in the world would this be a benefit to
anyone? Give me a break. This means that people who need to access
something specific via a link would have to copy and paste the link instead of
simply clicking on it and going to the site. The whole concept completely
boggles my mind. I see no purpose in it. I could create a theory
regarding spoof emails as it's origin, but that would require this post to be
even longer, and it's already turning into a novel.
The only saving grace, in my opinion, is AOL's online web mail. The
online version still makes your spam folder hard to find, but in general you can
still click on links, are still required to remember your password, and it
functions just like any other web based mail. I have never understood why
AOL would talk about security in one sentence and then remember your password so
you didn't have to log in every time you accessed it. In fact It logs you in
automatically. This isn't secure. This means that every single
person that has or gains access to your computer would have 0 trouble accessing
your AOL account.
Anyway, I could go on, and on, but I shall desist. I think my point has
been mostly clarified, and if not, I'm sure I can post something at a later date
that will even further clarify my gripes with AOL.
Have you had your rant for the day?
Kitty ~ Out
