VIDEO: AOL'S DOWNFALL ACTUALLY COINCIDED WITH THE YEARS THEY ATTACKED THIS MINISTRY


As of March 2004 AOL Is now BANNING all email that comes from my ministry to their users. They do so not because I spam people, because I don't do that. The only ones receiving my Truth Provided Newsletters are only those that have SUBSCRIBED to them in advance. Nevertheless, it seems some at AOL have complained about this web-site, and the truth it contains regarding the Antichrist in Rome. (AOL terminated my service 6 years or so ago for preachign to Catholics in chat rooms) The ones complaining about this ministry have even gone so far as to lie and say I have spammed them to try and get AOL to block my site from their users. Of course they are not subscribers to my Newsletter, nor have I ever emailed them in the first place. Perhaps some friends that do get the Truth Provided Newsletters are posting my URL in their chat rooms on AOL, or forwarding my Newsletters to them. I don't know what caused the uproar because I don't use AOL, nor do I ever plan to. Aol is the most evil ISP on then planet. They push homosexuality and a bevy of other decdaence to their users daily in their advertisments. (Logon after hours and see what I mean)

Lately I have been getting word that some friends are even unable to access this website now if they use AOL as an ISP. My advice to them is cancel AOL. Their software and service is buggy in the first place, slower then straight access, and AOL is the most over priced service out there at present. There are literally millions of ISP's that offer the same thing AOL does for more than half the monthly cost. (AOL = $24.95 and others = $9.95) So, why pay extra? Especially when they CENSOR your access to the internet.

Monthly I receive a REJECTION notice informing me that numerous emails (  85  in my last Newsletter mailing -May 2004) when I sent out when the Truth Provided Newsletter were REJECTED by AOL for the following reason. By the way, the "new" rejection is worded a bit more sternly. Notice how they have banned my URL so as to prevent ANYONE from emailing their users with my URL.

I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out

<address hidden@aol.com>:
6x.1x.1xx.1xx failed after I sent the message.
Remote host said: 554-:  (HVU:B1)
The URL contained in your email to AOL members has generated a high volume of complaints. Per our Unsolicited BuCODE=DL0 554 TRANSACTION FAILED


april 2004 - <address hidden@aol.com>:
xx.xx.xxx.xxx failed after I sent the message.
Remote host said: 554-:  (HVU:B1)
The URL contained in your email to AOL members has generated a high volume of complaints. Per our Unsolicited Bulk Email policies, AOL will no longer accept email with the URL contained in your message.
554 TRANSACTION FAILED

AOL is now using a different method to hide the fact they are censoring this ministry. I received a LOT of rejections again today, (I sent the Newsletter out yesterday) and they said this for each email rejected...

<address hidden@aol.com>:
6x.8x.1xx.1xx failed after I sent the message.
Remote host said: 554-:  (HVU:B1)
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554hvub1.html
554 TRANSACTION FAILED

When you click that URL explaining the error, you get the following...

Error 554 HVU:B1
554 HVU:B1
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554hvub1.html

    EXPLANATION:
There is at least one URL in your email that is generating substantial complaints from AOL members.

    SOLUTION:
If you own all the domains linked to in your e-mail, please contact us to discuss more effective management of your complaint levels. You can start by setting up a free complaint loop through this form. This will allow you to receive AOL member complaints against your domain. If you do not own the domain, please have the owner of that domain contact us.

I deleted the above email address and IP address for obvious reasons. Sadly, ALL Newsletters from this day forward will be DELETED by AOL, as will any mention of "www.RemnantofGod.org" URL in any emails. Whether they be from me, or anyone else. So what I have decided to do is create a re-direct URL so as to prevent AOL from preventing the web-site information from being shared. For those of you using my URL in AOL to show friends and family, please use one of the following for now...

Try using this as a URL now...  RemnantofGod-dot-org Then tell your friends to replace the "-dot-" with a real dot (period) and it will work. As soon as that fails. I have others to use. I will NOT post them here all at once because AOL obviously hit this page and figured out my methods of encryption. So, until they get wind of this "work around" use it.

For those of you that use AOL, you will now have to access the Truth Provided Newsletter directly from the site at the main page. Sorry for the inconvenience. In my last mailing of the Newsletter, the AOL people have prevented many subscribers from receiving the Truth Provided Newsletter. AOL says they banned me because of "a high volume of complaints." Problem with that theory is, ALL those that receive my Newsletter must Subscribe first. I never send it to people that have not first signed up to receive it. So I ask... who is complaining?

For those of you that must keep AOL as an ISP because of the lack of Internet Service Provider's in your area. You can still receive my newsletters if you re-subscribe using a different email address. You can get FREE email addresses all over the Internet now. Hotmail.com and Yahoo.com are two popular places to enroll in a free email account. Or... just access the Newsletters on the site each month.

By the way, this all started with the March 2004 Newsletter. It is titled, "Rome's Homosexual Agenda."

ONE LAST NOTE before going further. The info I share below proves AOL customers are getting ripped off. I do not do this out of "revenge" towards AOL. For it is written "vengence is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord" -Romans 12:19 The reason I am sharing this info is because AOL is truly stealing from people now. Not only is their monthly charges upwards of 3 times higher then most ISP's, there is now massive evidence they are double charging people at random. I share this info with you, because I would hope you would share it with me if I used AOL. Besides, if I was out for revenge I could have done something 6 years or so ago when AOL banned me from using them for dialup when they didn't like me sharing truth in their chat rooms. Truth is, I just now found out about the money problems of AOL by accident while doing research, and that is why I am sharing this with all those that surf this site.

AOL NEWS:


It has also been reported by many online business's as well as regular AOL users that whenever AOL's email server load gets a bit heavy, they CLOSE the servers from any outside emails to help lower the load. However, all AOL customers can still email each other from within the grid. This makes for countless scores of lost emails to their users, especially business's who loose sales orders, or support email. Is keeping the high priced AOL really worth loosing business? For more info, and comments from large corporate entities on this new problem for AOL see this... http://www.lindacaroll.com/ao-hell.html That's right! NBC, AM TELCO and REALITY TIMES have dropped AOL after loosing money and business connections to this problem. Think about it! If LARGE corporations like this are loosing sales orders, and customers, how many of your customers have decided to seek products elsewhere because you never answered the emails AOL prevented you from receiving in the first place? Not to mention personal emails that never get to you? I wonder how many problems that caused between friends and families that "expected" an email they never received.

MORE BAD NEWS:
When you try to cancel AOL you may be in for an unpleasant surprise. It seems they purposely leave that info hidden on their website, and if and when you find it, they drag you through the ringer when you call to cancel. There are listerally thousands of horror stories from people that did try to cancel AOL service online. (click here for just one of them) You can surf the net using "Cancel AOL" and read them for yourselves. PLUS, the usual senario that seems to be playing out is AOL will double charge you at cancellation "by mistake." And "if" you catch it and complain, your back to being placed on hold, shuffled off to upwards of EIGHT operators, and then constantly inundated with please and incentives not to cancel. Want to learn how to avoid all that? The quickest and easiest way to cancel AOL service is to call your credit card company and tell them to refuse AOL's ability to automatically take payments from your card each month. Then sit back, relax.  :)

One last note. For those that choose to keep AOL. Check your credit card statements often! It has been reported that many people are seeing AOL charges showing up TWICE A MONTH lately "by accident." If this has happened to you, expect a real hassle getting AOL to fix the problem.

Also see this..

BTW... There are many more websites exposing AOL online. But most of them are so irrate with AOL that they use language and images I prefer not to be a part of sharing. I also do not condone the links I already shared above. They will probably link out to areas not suitable for Christians.


AOL blocks Christian email
by Marilyn Barnewall
July 26, 2004

Let me first say that I do not like America Online. I have had (well-documented) experiences with that company sufficient to justify my dislike.

I have previously written about the very large number of consumer complaints directed at AOL by customers and former customers. I spent a full day on the Internet investigating them before writing my article. Based on what I saw, I am not the Lone Ranger in my disdain for what I perceive to be a lack of business ethics at this company.

I have saved numerous letters to my internet service provider about e-mail delivery problems. I keep getting returned e-mails sent to valid addresses. I keep copies of my e-mails and my server's responses. It happened so often, I began to watch for trends.

E-mails on religious topics are always delivered to all recipients listed except people with @aol.com addresses. I usually send to about 25 people, eight of whom have @aol.com addresses.

Any of my e-mails that transmit negative information about John Kerry are delivered to all recipients except people with @aol.com addresses. Please bear in mind I send negative information about the other side, too. They get delivered.

My most recent experience with AOL mail recipients was an e-mail from the majority of John Kerry's shipmates in Viet Nam. Anyone who watches the news has seen the photo of Kerry in Viet Nam with a dozen (plus) shipmates.

As I understand from the news and an e-mail I received, two sailors in the photo are dead, two support John Kerry, and the other ten (or, so) oppose him. They say he "is not fit to be Commander-in-Chief." They have made their statement publicly and it has appeared on nightly news.

I e-mailed the information to 25 friends. It contained a quote from Senator Kerry's ex-shipmates who oppose his bid for the presidency. This message got through to everyone on the list except the eight @aol.com addresses.

It made me angry. One or two addresses may be on vacation and have too much mail. That causes mail rejections. One may have changed his or her internet service provider (ISP). All of them, however, were not unreachable. This, I said, is a trend.

I sent other messages to those same @aol.com addresses the same day messages that had nothing to do with politics or religion. They all got through.

I re-sent the same message. It came back, again.

I went through the message, removing any reference to John Kerry by name (adding the words "you know who" in place of his name). I removed any reference to the word "liberal" (using the words "you know what" in its place).

Again, I sent the message. I wrote an explanation of what had occurred to each person. I asked if they liked having their e-mail monitored by Big Brother. I also left copies of AOL's mail rejection during prior mailing attempts. Each e-mail explained why the previous two messages could not be delivered (usually "no such address"). This time, the e-mail got through to all @aol.com addresses.

Would you say that smells a little like rotten cheese in Rotterdam?

In mid-July, I got an e-mail message from a friend. It was a news story from CNSNews.com. The story was about 13-year-oild Erin who was upset to learn that America Online's Instant Message (AIM) robot, Smarter Child, favored Democrat John Kerry in this year's election.

Erin input a message to Smarter Child that "George Bush is awesome." The computer robot shot back the message to Erin, "No way. George W. Bush is way uncool."

Erin was not easily deterred. She input another message to the robot, "Do you like George W. Bush?"

The computer responded, "I'm a Kerry supporter myself."

Erin typed into her instant messenger, "John Kerry rocks."

The robot responded, "Absolutely. John Kerry rocks."

Erin asked Smarter Child what it thought of George Bush. It replied, "If you don't have anything good 2 say about someone, don't say anything at all." The robot then winked at Erin.

Internet Service Providers are in business to serve the needs of their clients, not to indoctrinate them (or their children). In fact, because they take money from people to serve their online needs -- including the sending and delivery of all e-mail -- to deflect certain e-mails because content does not agree with an ISPs political or religious views could be considered fraud.

Unless there is an exception clause in your contract with a customer informing him or her that mail delivery will not be made if it offends liberal or conservative political standards at your company, you are obliged to deliver political e-mail you may not like. That's called the real business world.

Now there's a law suit waiting to happen: Where is John Edwards when you need him?

I'm interested in hearing from readers any experiences you may have had with selective e-mail delivery from any Internet Service Provider.

The Internet and our access to unaltered news and e-mailed copies of it is one of the last vestiges we have of honest news.

http://www.businessreform.com/article.php?articleID=10659


INTERNET NEWS
AOL employee gets 15 months in prison
Sold 92 million screen names to spammers

Posted: August 18, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

Have you ever wondered how pornographers and sexual chat groups manage to Instant Message you with an invitation to click over to one of their sites? You can thank Jason Smathers. The 25-year-old former AOL employee managed to steal 92 million AOL screen names and sell them to a "spammer," according to authorities. Yesterday, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison after pleading guilty in February to charges including conspiracy and interstate trafficking of stolen property.

He was paid $28,000 by an Internet marketer for the names, which were taken from AOL's database of 30 million subscribers at the time. AOL subscribers can have multiple screen names for each account. Smathers cooperated with prosecutors and appeared sorrowful in court yesterday, surrounded by family members. He faced up to 24 months in prison under federal guidelines. "I know I have done something very wrong," he told U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein.

Prosecutors said AOL suffered an estimated loss of $300,000 from employee time spent dealing with the issue, as well as hardware and software expenses. Hellerstein said that while AOL's loss estimate was hard to prove, the offense was still serious. "People use e-mail as a primary measure of communication these days," he said. "Companies need to preserve the integrity of the information they have."

In stealing the e-mail names of AOL customers, Smathers created "the sale of a line of products customers had no need for," the judge said. In a letter to the judge, Smathers pleaded for leniency. He described himself as "an outlaw" in the "new frontier" of cyberspace.


They BLOCK Christian emails from getting to you. Their employees SELL your email addresses to porn spammers. Their main page turns into a smorgasbord of sin for both the Homosexual as well as Heterosexual pervesions "after hours" And you as a Christian cannot see WHY it is best to withdraw yourself from helping AOL stay in business? Especially after there are literally hundreds of better Internet service providers at one third the cost?

Think about it this way. You are a Christian. There are people that know you and look to you for their Christian example. They watch you like a hawk to see if you are a hypocrite or not. Sadly, that's how most people look at Christians. They KNOW you use AOL because they get email from you. And they know all about AOL and their sin filled services. They also know there are much better and cheaper services out there because they themselves use them. So... are they thinking that the sin AOL "blesses" you with is so enticing that you would pay three times as much to keep it?

James 4:17, "Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin."

Would Jesus use AOL?


Outrage Over AOL Email Filtering Plans

Rich Ord
CEO, iEntry, Inc.
Published: 2006-02-09


AOL's announcement last week that they are often deleting links and images from emails from those who aren't whitelisted has created a firestorm from their subscribers.

Here are some of the comments I received in response to articles in WebProNews about AOL's partnership with Goodmail:

When I saw the article about this in the Sunday paper I had much the same thoughts, only the word "extortion" was the first one I thought of. If AOL, which has always had a cavalier attitude about other companies, decides to make people pay to have their email delivered (and that will be the next step), they will end up losing business. I, for one, would place a notice on my opt-in email sign-up form that I cannot deliver to an aol address. That will mean AOL customers will miss out on a ton of free information. Others will undoubtedly do the same thing.

Your point about libel is a good one. The copyright laws might also come into play here. Huge fines and court costs possible.

I think this is a trial balloon on AOL's part, though.
Posted by:
Robert Cain

=================

AS a long suffering but very patient customer of AOL (8,Years) I finally took the plunge and dumped AOL. This latest scam by AOL will hopefully put the final nail in their coffin. It is another attempt at extortion and control by internet companies not only ISP's. YOu only have to look at Intel, Microsoft and Google. At least Jessie James had the decency to wear a mask.
Posted by: Phill

=================

When AOL and Yahoo start doing this my plan is just to ignore it. Next I might start saying that "this site does not send email to AOL or Yahoo"- if enough people did this then there might not be any value in people using Yahoo or AOL.
Posted by:
Gary Bradshaw

=================

Am I reading this right. If I have an email account with Yahoo or AOL and have a paid subscription to someone to receive a weekly newsheet, then Yahoo or AOL can decide that because my supplier aren't paying them to deliver to me then they can unilateraly either block links or whatever on that mail or even junk it.
Sounds like more than possible libel - could be theft
Posted by:
Tony

=================

This is like the post office opening mail & removing or changeing what is in the envelope.
Infringment of privacy & criminal
offence in uk (felony level in usa)
& should be treated by the courts in the same way. next they will be adding their OWN advertisments!
Posted by:
ronangel

=================

RE: AOL's Email Tax

Rich,

I hope you're right about AOL reversing course. For this to happen, they need to get a bloody nose. By slipping the announcement in on Superbowl Sunday, they are trying to minimize the initial PR damage. And, things have been surprisingly quiet. There needs to be a huge outcry. The following is a press release we tossed out.

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2006/2/emw343224.htm

We do have a real dilemma. 20% of my customer base uses AOL or Yahoo. We're supposed to be whitelisted with AOL, but since January, we've had trouble communicating with Yahoo customers. I do not intend to pay goodmail. We are looking into Habeas and Bonded Sender. If spending $10K a year or so would end delivery problems, I'd pay it in a heartbeat. I won't pay up to $150K, which is what goodmail could cost. We'll probably run an announcement in a few more days stating that we're not going to pay goodmail and will instead direct our subscribers to different email providers (which, in fact, has already begun).

Thanks for fighting this. Lots of people need to fight it.

Matt Michel
CEO & President
The Service Roundtable
www.serviceroundtable.com

=================

Hi Rich, I read your article on webpronews.com and agree with you completely. I am happy to say that my company will be delivering the solution to the Goodmail problem, the
Spam Cube.

The first consumer anti-spam/anti-virus gadget for residential, the "ipod of spam protection" if you will.

David J. Soares
Chief Business Development Officer
Spam Cube, Inc

=================

Agree that that it sounds like a failed model to charge for the delivery of free subscription emails. And I don't think people will pay for 99% of the free emails that they subscribe to for the very reason that they are free. However, a way to somehow register the sender that would be able for a users email app to use as a part of a filter function would maybee do the trick. It wouldn't stop spammers, but it decrease their possibilities of getting through maybee?
Posted by: Michael

=================

I haven't studied AOL's plans and can't speak about it specifically, and some of what I have heard seems ominous, but I for one am definitely willing to pay to get my mail through or posting a bond at least. Too much valid mail is being blocked and this causes all kinds of problems for small firms reaching their customers or members. Hopefully it also results in a reduction of spam.
Posted by: Anonymous

=================

This is the thin end of the wedge. I would strongly suggest that any service provider that does not allow mail from any source to go to the recipcant as was intended (spam filters as used at present excepted) & who does not provide an opt out box to tick, should have all their sevices boycotted by users in every country.vote them out with your wallet if you dont like what they do!
Posted by:
ronangel

AOL CUSTOMER TRIES TO CANCEL SERVICE


On Tape: Rep Won't Let Customer Quit AOL
NBC | June 22 2006

An incredible video from CNBC shows an AOL customer trying to cancel his account, but a phone rep won't let him do it. What customer Vincent Ferrari got when he tried to cancel his account was a lot of frustration.

It took him 15 minutes waiting on the phone just to reach a real, live person.

And, what happened next was recorded by Ferrari on audio and lasted about four minutes:

CLOCK READOUT - 00:00
 

AOL REPRESENTATIVE: Hi this is John at AOL... how may I help you today?

VINCENT FERRARI: I wanted to cancel my account.

AOL: Sorry to hear that. Let's pull your account up here real quick. Can I have your name please?

VINCENT: Vincent Ferrari.

CLOCK READOUT - 00:30

AOL: You've had this account for a long time.

VINCENT: Yup.

AOL: Use this quite a bit. What was the cause of wanting to turn this off today?

VINCENT: I just don't use it anymore.

AOL: Do you have a high speed connection, like the DSL or cable?

VINCENT: Yup.

AOL: How long have you had that...

VINCENT: Years...

AOL: ...the high speed?

VINCENT: ...years.

AOL: Well, actually I'm showing a lot of usage on this account.

VINCENT: Yeah, a long time, a long time ago, not recently...

CLOCK READOUT - 01:47

AOL: Okay, I mean is there a problem with the software itself?

VINCENT: No. I just don't use it, I don't need it, I don't want it. I just don't need it anymore.

AOL: Okay. So when you use this... I mean, use the computer, I'm saying, is that for business or for... for school?

VINCENT: Dude, what difference does it make. I don't want the AOL account anymore. Can we please cancel it?

CLOCK READOUT - 02:21

AOL: Last year was 545, last month was 545 hours of usage...

VINCENT: I don't know how to make this any clearer, so I'm just gonna say it one last time. Cancel the account.

AOL: Well explain to me what's, why...

VINCENT: I'm not explaining anything to you. Cancel the account.

AOL: Well, what's the matter man? We're just, I'm just trying to help here.

VINCENT: You're not helping me. You're helping me...

AOL: I am trying to help.

VINCENT: Helping... listen, I called to cancel the account. Helping me would be canceling the account. Please help me and cancel the account.

AOL: No, it wouldn't actually...

VINCENT: Cancel my account...

AOL: Turning off your account...

VINCENT: ...cancel the account...

AOL: ...would be the worst thing that...

VINCENT: ...cancel the account.

CLOCK READOUT - 03:02

AOL: Okay, cause I'm just trying to figure out...

VINCENT: Cancel the account. I don't know how to make this any clearer for you. Cancel the account. When I say cancel the account, I don't mean help me figure out how to keep it, I mean cancel the account.

AOL: Well, I'm sorry, I don't know what anybody's done to you Vincent because all I'm...

VINCENT: Will you please cancel the account.

CLOCK READOUT - 03:32

AOL: Alright, some day when you calmed down you're gonna realize that all I was trying to do was help you... and it was actually in your best interest to listen to me.

VINCENT: Wonderful, Okay.

CLOCK READOUT - 03:39

"I've never ever experienced anything like that," Ferrari told CNBC.

He recounts how the AOL representative - as a last resort even asked if his dad was home.

"I think I could've put up with everything, but at the point when he asked to speak to my father, I came very close to losing it at that point," said the 30-year-old Ferrari.

Ferrari then posted the call online, and the response was tremendous.

AOL sent him an apology and said the customer service rep was no longer with the company.
 

On Tape: Rep Won't Let Customer Quit AOL

An incredible video from CNBC shows an AOL customer trying to cancel his account, but a phone rep won't let him do it. What customer Vincent Ferrari got when he tried to cancel his account was a lot of frustration.

 It took him 15 minutes waiting on the phone just to reach a real, live person.  

And, what happened next was recorded by Ferrari on audio and lasted about four minutes:
http://www.nbc10.com/news/9406462/detail.html 



AOL posts 20 million users' Internet queries
'Research' document later removed after hundreds download data file


Posted: August 7, 2006
5:00 p.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
 
America Online posted on the Internet - for a brief time - all of the search requests made by more than half-a-million customers, setting users in a rage.

"The utter stupidity of this is staggering," one comment on the website TechCrunch.com said today.

The data released includes all the searches submitted by an estimated 650,000 users over a three-month period, the results of the search, whether the users clicked on the result and where it appeared on the result page.

The file, was posted over the weekend and quickly removed, and TechCrunch said that means someone at AOL realized the damage that was being done and "is also an admission of wrongdoing of sorts."

Either way, the website noted, the information, a file of 439 megabits compressed and about 2 gigabits in standard file formation, now is available because of the estimated 1,000 copies made during the time it was up.

Later seekers of the posting were given an "Error - Bad Request" response.

While the AOL usernames had been changed in the file to a random ID number, TechCrunch said analyzing all searches listed by a single user often can lead people to determine the identity.

"The most serious problem is the fact that many people often search on their own name, or those of their friends and family, to see what information is available about them on the net," TechCrunch said. "Combine these ego searches with porn queries and you have a serious embarrassment.

"Combine them with 'buy ecstasy' and you have evidence of a crime," the website said.

For example, user Number 39509 searched for "oklahoma disciplined pastors," "oklahoma disciplined doctors," and "home loans."

Number 545605 searched for "transfer money to china" and "capital gains on sale of house."

The AOL file included information about 20 million total searches, and logged User IDs, questions, question times, rank of the clicks and destination URLs.

"The goal of this collection is to provide a real query log based on users," the page said. "It could be used for personalization, query reformulation or other type of search research."

The AOL page also provided two warnings.

"This collection is distributed for non-commercial search only. Any application of this collection for commercial purposes is STRICTLY PROHIBITED."

The second was: "Please be aware that these queries are not filtered to remove any content. Pornography is prevalent on the Web and unfiltered search engine logs contain queries by users who are looking for pornographic material."

One of the first comments in response to the posting was from a graduate student working on PageRank algorithms. She wanted to know if further details of the queries were available.

The posting comes just a few months after a judge rejected a blanket subpoena from the Department of Justice to Google, another major Internet presence. The DOJ had sought two month's worth of users' search queries, but Google resisted the subpoena, and Judge James Ware excluded search queries and limited the government's demand for URLs to 50,000.

At the time, Google called it a victory.

"While privacy was not the most significant legal issue in this case (because the government wasn't asking for personally identifiable information), privacy was perhaps the most significant to our users," the company's statement said.

"We believe that if the government was permitted to require Google to hand over search queries, that could have undermined confidence that our users have in our ability to keep their information private."

Google said the judge's ruling in that case meant "that neither the government nor anyone else has carte blanche when demanding data from Internet companies."

Microsoft also has considered releasing similar data to researchers, although not the part that would allow data to be associated with an individual user.

AOL's website did not address the posting


 
Even dead people can't escape AOL

By David Sheets
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
08/04/2006

Maxine Gauthier doesn't own a computer. She doesn't know the first thing about Web browsing or sending e-mail. She's not even sure where to find a computer's "on" button, as she describes it.

Yet for the past nine months, she has been fighting one of the most persistent and some say irritating institutions in cyberspace: AOL, formerly known as America Online.

"They just haven't wanted to let go," the 55-year-old St. Louisan said. "I don't think they'll ever really let go."

Her struggle has involved about a dozen phone calls often ending with an AOL customer service representative or manager hanging up on her. She even tried impersonating someone else in a couple of the calls. The giant online service provider wouldn't budge.

The problem? An AOL account once held by Gauthier's late father still showed billing charges accumulating against it. The account had been dormant for months; the credit card he used for it was inactive at least as long.

Nevertheless, AOL kept charging $25.90 each month for dial-up online access. Late fees for non-payment accumulated on the credit card, too.

Gauthier even offered to send a copy of her father's obituary as proof he truly was dead. AOL was unmoved.

"An AOL service guy told me to stop complaining and learn to use a computer," she said. "Then he hung up."

Customer service hell

Gauthier's experience with AOL mirrors that of millions who have tried to discontinue their dial-up or other service, only to encounter stonewalling or outright verbal abuse from the company's customer service agents.

The Dulles, Va.-based company, with more than 17 million customers, was once the leading online service provider. But it has bled customers in recent years -- it lost almost 1 million customers between May and June alone -- as more people have moved away from dial-up service toward faster, more dependable broadband Internet connections.

Most of AOL's $1 billion in profits continues to come from subscriptions to dial-up service, a market it still dominates.

Another factor in AOL's decline has been the increase in free services elsewhere online, such as e-mail and ad blocking, that AOL provided at a cost. The company announced Wednesday that it was dropping many of these charges but would continue charging fees for dial-up service.

Yet, neither the Internet's transition to broadband nor the increase in Web-based freebies has damaged AOL's bottom line in recent weeks quite as much as its lamentable customer service, now a punch line on late-night television and in cyberspace.

Thank Vincent Ferrari for that.

The New York blogger and former AOL loyalist used to spend his time online exclusively at AOL's Web portal. He even met his wife there. But broadband beckoned and Ferrari's AOL usage declined to nearly zero. He decided to end the relationship.

Ferrari had heard that breaking up with AOL was difficult to do -- customer service agents allegedly employed every trick short of threats to keep people from dropping out -- so
he recorded his call to customer service and posted it on his Web site.

The acrimonious result made huge news online and on television, and inspired a flood of responses. Immediately, AOL clients everywhere recounted their own bad experiences on blogs, TV and radio.

Gauthier saw all this and was inspired. She nearly had given up her own fight.

"I saw that I wasn't the only one with trouble. So, that's why I called you," she told Tech Talk.

"Shut up and listen"

When Gauthier's father, Melvin Berkowitz, died last summer, he was living in Florida and had one credit card. Its only charges were to AOL. Gauthier's mother, Marion Berkowitz, now 80, and still living in Florida, had her name on the account but never used it.

Gauthier discovered the continuing dial-up service charge as she was settling her father's estate. She first called to cancel the AOL account last November.

"They told me I didn't have the answer to his 'security question'," a query many shopping Web sites once employed to assure themselves they were talking to the account holder, "so they said 'Thank you' and hung up," Gauthier said.

She turned to the credit card company and asked that it stop accepting the charges.

"They told me they needed a letter first from AOL saying the account was inactive," Gauthier said.

Another call to AOL, which promised Gauthier it would send the letter immediately. That was in December.

"But I never heard any word," she said. "And these charges kept appearing on the credit card statement."

She kept calling AOL, trying to find out more about the letter. AOL countered by saying it never received a request to send it.

With each subsequent call, AOL became more curt with Gauthier. During one exchange, "the guy - I think it was a manager - just told me to 'shut up and listen to what I have to say or don't bother calling.'
Then he hung up on me," she said.

Gauthier even resorted to pretending she was her mother, because her mother's name also was on the credit card statement. "No luck. They just kept asking me for the answer to the security question," Gauthier said.

A nice guy named Ben

Through the spring and early summer, Gauthier made no progress. The charges -- and now, credit card late fees -- kept mounting, totaling at least $200. After Ferrari's experience with AOL became public, she pressed harder, thinking the bad publicity might loosen AOL's grip.

In June, she called again. This time, AOL insisted that her father's account had not been active since January, and AOL had not charged Melvin Berkowitz's credit card since.

The credit card statements since January, however, said otherwise.

Gauthier again called the credit card company. In early July, she received two letters from it. The first said the charges were fraudulent. The second said they weren't.

"That's when I gave up and called your Tech Talk column," she said.

We tried contacting AOL using all the customer service numbers Gauthier had used. Initially, AOL's headquarters in Virginia didn't answer our messages, so we tried the general customer service number. Within seven minutes, Tech Talk was speaking to Ben, based at an AOL customer service center in Albuquerque, N.M.

Ben, in fact, was very nice.

"A few bad apples"

"If (a customer calls) and gets an AOL rep such as myself, we have to cancel that account at their request," Ben said, explaining procedure. "We have to honor that request. So, there is no ulterior motive or agenda on us to not cancel, really.

"It changed recently where, you know, we have to cancel immediately,"

Ben continued. "We can offer them a better price; that's our job. But if they're adamant, then you cancel the account."

Gauthier had given Tech Talk her father's account information, and we in turn passed it along to Ben, who couldn't give his last name because AOL disallowed it.

"I see here that on May 28, there was a form filled out that this person was deceased. ... That account is cancelled out, right now," Ben said.

He explained that, for whatever reason, the form didn't get back to Melvin Berkowitz's file until mid-June, "so that month was our last bill. There won't be any more bills; I can assure you of that."

Not long after Tech Talk spoke to Ben, we received a call from Sarah Matin, AOL corporate communications manager, in Dulles, Va. She denied that AOL condoned hard selling among its customer service workers.

"We have a huge volume of customer service, millions of customers, so within that scale, of course, there are going to be a few bad apples," Matin said. "Obviously, we have to do much better."

Resolution, or not?

Finally, this month, Gauthier was able to cancel her father's credit card. The AOL charges, going back to last summer, were wiped away, and she was reimbursed for both the charges and late fees.

But the story apparently isn't over. It turns out that Gauthier also has an AOL account, established more than a decade ago when her two daughters were pre-teens first learning to surf the Internet. She has no idea what has become of the account; it has been dormant for years.

She never used it. She's hesitant to find out its status.

"After going through all that trouble over my father, I'm not sure I could handle that again," she said.

Plus, there's this: A few days ago, Gauthier obtained a letter from AOL that was sent to her mother in Florida. The letter was addressed to Melvin Berkowitz.

"Dear Mr. Berkowitz," it said. "We hope you'll come back to AOL."

Once an AOL customer, always an AOL customer.


Is Google censoring POGM?
By Nicholas
Jan. 13, 2008
 

As many of you are already aware, AOL has been banning this ministry from sending emails to most of their users, as well as blocking this ministry's website from appearing on many of their users browsers. This has to do with Time Warner's antiChristian stand of course. Now it appears Google has joined the fight against Present Truth as well. I was alerted of this censoring a month or so ago by a friend of the ministry. Some alternative News Sources were being censored, but I just figured this as par for the course. But then it dawned on me the other day to Google my ministry. Notice the following evidence I dug up...

Placing "RemnantofGod.org" in Google and you will find only 4,310 pages linking to this site (as of 01-13-08)

To some that may appear perfectly acceptable. However, when you place the exact same URL in Yahoo, and AltaVista you get some very surprising results...

AltaVista reports 47,600 websites are linking to this ministry (as of 01-13-08)

Yahoo reports 48,900 websites are linking to this ministry (as of 01-13-08)

If you click these links tomorrow or the next day the totals will be different of course as some servers may be offline causing the number to fall, and new websites will be linking causing the numbers to increase. But all in all, Google, the supposed #1 search engine on the Internet has over 10 times less links to this ministry then the others.

Not much can be done about this of course because Goggle is privately owned and like AOL they can do as they please. This is why they are so flooding the media with paid as well as free advertising. The term "google it" is all over Hollywood and the Networks to make Google #1. Each time they use that term on the News, in a sitcom, or in a movie Google gets a free advert. The term "Google it" has become so popular that I'm sure many of you reading this have used it. Think about this for a minute. If everyone is going to Google to search the Internet, which by the way is to be expected by the American sheeple, then the censoring works very effectively. Without realizing it, most people are going to Google even though they can get over 10 times more data by using Yahoo or AltaVista.

NEW EVIDENCE HAS BEEN UNEARTHED REGARDING GOOGLE'S CENSORING OF POGM!


Secure Spot software calls poGm a Terrorist!

I just received this letter today from a sister in Christ...

Just a note to let you know........I recently purchased HP laptop w/Norton Utility installed. I also use Firefox web browser.....so I'm on the web researching various topics and come across your site and when I try to access a program called SECURE SPOT blocks your site and calls it an extremist, terrorist, etc. - thought you would like to know that Secure Spot is blocking your site and calling you a terrorist.

-Janet P.

I contacted the lawyers that are suing the Vatican for war crimes, and this is what they told me...

Yes, I have another client who was blocked by a similar service 8e6 - http://www.marshal8e6.com/ Interestingly these are the same folks that run the Great Internet Wall of China. Anyone with this sort of filtering software should uninstall it.

-Dr. Jonathan Levy
http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/ 

China as we know, blocks all non-Catholic religious sites from gaining access to their citizens PC's. This is proof enough in my eyes that Rome is involved in blocking the Present Truth message about the Antichrist in the Vatican via D-Link routers, computer peripherals, or ISP's with "Secure Spot" installed on them for their customers. Truth is, the Vatican did announce back in May of 2007 if anyone speaks out against them and their proven homosexual prelates they could be considered terrorists. Is it a coincidence that Presents of God ministry is now tagged as such by the same software company that helps China weed out all anti-Catholic websites?

I also emailed Janet back and asked her if someone else had access to her computer to turn on the block. She assured me no one else has that access. This means either her new PC had the blocking software turned on in the store, her D-Link Router has the software on by default, or her ISP turned it on for their customers, which is in fact an illegal act. If this turns out to be the case, all of us Christians with websites out there are about to be tagged as extremists and or terrorists. But then, prophecy did say it was going to get ugly.

One thing history has taught us is, when the Vatican accuses someone else of an evil act, it's because they themselves are the ones doing it. They have been exposed historically of using this method of finger pointing to pull the onus off of them on a regular basis. They use it because it works. Well, at least up until now that is. Praise the Lord that after thousands of years of prophetic utterances regarding Satan's methods, and 1471 years of documented Vatican history proving Rome is in bed with Satan, we now have Christians walking this earth with far more knowledge than Rome ever imagined possible. They know now there are far too many of us, and we are far too scattered by our Lord to contend with as a group. So they are only left with trying to censor the Truth we share just as they did back in the Council of Valencia in 1229AD when they burned all the Bibles that proved, the popes are indeed the prophecied ANTICHRIST! In fact, they have even documented their hatred of the Christian Bible for all to see! With that said... Come Lord Jesus!


HOTMAIL BANS POGM

Notice the email I received today (01-28-10) from Hotmail email servers.

The message was undeliverable due to an error in receiving system.
Listed are all the recepients with appropriate explanation from remote system
on the reasons, why the message could not be delivered:

Email: xxxxxxx@hotmail.com
Reason: U-001
Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. Reasons for rejection may be related to content with spam-like characteristics or IP/domain reputation problems.

As I stated earlier, I never SPAM anyone. The only ones (that used to) get my Newsletter were SUBSCRIBERS! The above is the end result of some (not all) Roman Catholics and SDA people complaining about the Present Truth I am called to preach. Praise the Lord for the RSS feeds we use now! We can now bypass all email servers completely.

By the way, this BAN appears to be selective in that not all of the Hotmail servers are blocking me. But it does appear the majority are.

THIS PROBLEM HAS BEEN RECTIFIED AFTER CONTACTING SPAMHAUSE


YAHOO BANS POGM

Notice the email I received today (01-28-10) from Yahoo email servers.

The message was undeliverable due to an error in receiving system.
Listed are all the recepients with appropriate explanation from remote system
on the reasons, why the message could not be delivered:

Email: xxxxxxx@yahoo.com
Reason: [BL21] Connections not accepted from 12.177.8.132 due to
being on Spamhaus; see http://postmaster.yahoo.com/550-bl23.html

It appears RemnantofGod.org has been placed ON SPAMHAUS! That's a mainline SPAM service that most ISP's use. I have emailed them to try and get me removed, but... time will tell. Again, I never SPAM anyone. The only ones (that used to) get my Newsletter were SUBSCRIBERS! The above is the end result of some (not all) Roman Catholics and SDA people complaining about the Present Truth I am called to preach. Praise the Lord for the RSS feeds we use now! We can now bypass all email servers completely.

By the way, this BAN appears to be selective in that not all of the Yahoo servers are blocking me. But it does appear the majority are.

Ironic don't you think? They BAN me from sending emails, yet their own search engines sends millions to my site each month! Praise the Lord. PLUS.. even if they do "censor" this site on their search engines, last I checked we had 26,000,000 websites linking back to this website. So, even if they do cut us off, the millions of Christians out their linking back will continue to send seekers our way! Only the Lord God could do such a thing! It is because of all these links that I have not had to use submission services the last few years! Praise the Lord!!!

THIS PROBLEM HAS BEEN RECTIFIED AFTER CONTACTING SPAMHAUSE


The Presents of God ministry