Is AOL Losing the Fight Against Spam?

When 13-year-old Ashley finally convinced her parents to let her have her own screen name on America Online, she did what most kids her age would do. She visited chat rooms, perused message boards, and exchanged e-mail with her friends.

What Ashley didn't realize, however, was that her first solo voyage through cyberspace had not gone unnoticed. Every time she posted a message on a message board or made an innocent quip in a chat room, junk mailers harvested her e-mail address--a fact that became abundantly (and offensively) clear when Ashley logged on for a second time, just 48 hours later.

"There were more than 200 e-mail messages--most of which were about porn sites," recalls Ashley's mom, Marta, who is still angry about the incident. "We've always received some junk e-mail, but never anything like what Ashley got in just a few days."

Although I've written about junk e-mail before and received more than my fair share of spam, Ashley's story stopped me in my tracks. I know that chatting and message-board postings will be part of my preteen daughter's online experience. And it makes my skin crawl to think of my daughter--or anyone else's--wading through X-rated solicitations to read the latest missive from her best friend. (With parental control features enabled, a subscriber with a "teen" designation can't actually access any of the X-rated sites advertised in junk mailings. But the messages themselves, with subject lines like "Free Porn" and "Young Nude Females," are disturbing enough.)

Ashley's experience isn't unique. Shortly after I spoke with Ashley's mom, a PC World editor relayed a similar experience. And since then I've heard from many parents of teens who are struggling to control the steady stream of spam that flows into their children's AOL mailboxes.