AOL Quietly Opens its Mail System to Outside World

[Michael Muderick]

I occasionally pickup my mail through an internet server such as
mail2web.com.

I get a message back:

Error : AOL email accounts are not POP3 or IMAP4 compatible.
You must have POP3 or IMAP4 compatible email account to use mail2web.

Is this because they haven't updated their auto-response to AOL mail
requests?

Michael Muderick

[Barry Margolin]

In article <telecom...@telecom-digest.org>, Michael Muderick
<michael....@verizon.net> wrote:

It looks like it to me. If this message were due to an actual error
that they encountered trying to access the AOL mail server, I doubt it
would be so well customized. Since AOL users are likely to be
computer-illiterate, it looks like they put in a special case for it
so that they could generate a message that's relatively
understandable.

Barry Margolin, bar...@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA

*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** Please don't copy me on replies. ***

[Wes...@aol.com]

In a message dated Wed, 14 Apr 2004 00:33:26 -0400, Barry Margolin <
bar...@alum.mit.edu> writes:

>> Error : AOL email accounts are not POP3 or IMAP4 compatible.
>> You must have POP3 or IMAP4 compatible email account to use mail2web.

>> Is this because they haven't updated their auto-response to AOL mail
>> requests?

> It looks like it to me. If this message were due to an actual error
> that they encountered trying to access the AOL mail server, I doubt it
> would be so well customized. Since AOL users are likely to be
> computer-illiterate, it looks like they put in a special case for it
> so that they could generate a message that's relatively
> understandable.

"Relatively understandable"? If you really think AOL users are
likely to be computer illiterate, why would you think they would be
able to assign any meaning to "POP3" or "IMAP4"?

Wes Leatherock
wes...@aol.com
wlea...@yahoo.com

[Barry Margolin]

That's why I said "relatively understandable" rather than
"understandable".

[Michael Muderick]

When I wrote to mail2web.com and told them that AOL was now compatible, all
I got back were the boilerplate answers. 2 days later, I can now access AOL
through Mail2web. They didn't even write to thank me. Unbelievable.

According to mail2web's site (www.mail2web.com), they now support AOL
email accounts. Check it out.

Barry Margolin <bar...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:<telecom...@telecom-digest.org>: