SillyDog701

[JudyH-OH]

For the past 2 days I have been attempting to either forward e-mails that I have received or jokes I send out myself. I get a pop-up message telling me to go to "challenge@aol.com/spam/html" What's the matter?

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; FunWebProducts; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Media Center PC 4.0)

[profman]

For the past 2 days I have been attempting to either forward e-mails that I have received or jokes I send out myself. I get a pop-up message telling me to go to "challenge@aol.com/spam/html" What's the matter?

In short, AOL has aquired Mailblocks which uses a Challenge/Response approach to blocking E-mail that it thinks may be spam. (Mailblocks may also still have its own customers.) The idea is that only humans respond to a challenge, whereas spamers do not.

Go to:

http://challenge.aol.com/spam.html

and register in order to be able to send mail to AOL people with Mailblocks active. I was able to register with my old Netscape/AOL name. After registration, I got the message:

Congratulations!


You have passed the image challenge. You can now send mail.

Thanks for your cooperation,

The Mail Team

List of decent references:

goodbye-to-spam-maybe
mailblocks-just-sucks
aol_erects_mailblocks
SillyDog Post: AOL / AIM Spam Challenge
Mailblocks Update Offers Easier Spam Blocking

[Perhaps a moderator in this forum can change the title to the more appropriate "Can't send out e-mails."]

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915

[AAPal]

Thanks so much, moderator Profman!!! Going to the challenge.aol.com link you mentioned in your post and registering has allowed me to send emails.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; America Online Browser 1.6-embedded; rev1.6; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

[AAPal]

Perhaps I was too quick to praise the challenge...

I was able to send 2 emails after "registering" with that link. Then, I had to revisit the challenge.aol link to send another email! Am I going to need to do this for every email??? This is ridiculous. I think AOL's days are numbered.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; America Online Browser 1.6-embedded; rev1.6; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)