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Lots of AOL news over the past couple days. First the easy stuff:
Showing support for the anemic online advertising business (which blew the doors off projections for Q1 growth, by the by), AOL is purchasing advertising.com according to this item from ABCNEWS.com: AOL Buys Advertising.com for $435 Million.
The next set of links is more interesting. Yesterday the NYTimes ran a story about how the big-four ISPs were working together to rid the world of spam: 4 Rivals Almost United on Ways to Fight Spam. That it is a Quixotic battle should be immaterial: it's keeping everyone occupied. Good news for AOL because it's one of the big four. How long a day can be . . . when the very next morning two stories appear, this time from the Toronto Star: AOL subscriber list allegedly sold to spammers (subhead: Police accuse pair of stealing 92 million screen names, putting them up for bids) and Two arrested in AOL spam scheme. Good to see law enforcement working so rapidly.
The moral of the story is that where there's value, and apparently there is (commercial) value in spamming -- and hence having a rich vein of ore to mine -- there is no stopping progress. Note that the root problem here is not one that can be readily stopped by an email technology or online security solution: maybe stronger, more prison-like security . . .
Posted by Grayson at June 24, 2004 08:55 AM