America Online Announces Spam in Member Inboxes Down by 20%-30%; AOL Provides 'State of Spam' Report to U.S. Senate at Congressional Hearing Today.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 20, 2004

Company Also Reports 2 Million AOL Members Have Signed Virtual,

Online Antispam Petition

In Congressional testimony today on Capitol Hill, America Online provided a "state of spam" update for lawmakers that included a comprehensive overview of the Company's multi-faceted antispam campaign on behalf of its members.

Ted Leonsis, Vice Chair of AOL and President of the AOL Core Service, told members of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee that AOL has "made tremendous efforts and progress in the fight against spam and spammers, using more tools and stronger methods. We've taken spam fighting to the next level - and beyond."

Mr. Leonsis said that the antispam cause was given a tremendous boost when Congress, at the urging of AOL and others, adopted the Federal "CAN-SPAM" law last fall. "You did a great service to the online medium and tens of millions of online consumers...CAN-SPAM was the right bill at the right time for all the right reasons, and we look forward to measuring its success with more time."

As a result of AOL's ongoing campaign against spam and spammers, Mr. Leonsis stated that junk email in member's email inboxes had declined by 20% to 30%, on average, over the past year. At the same time, Mr. Leonsis stated, member awareness of AOL's antispam activities had doubled to almost 80%, as measured by internal customer satisfaction surveys, since early 2003.

"First, 80% of our members are aware of AOL's many antispam efforts and agree that we are doing all we can to reduce spam - that's up from about the 40% level in February 2003. Clearly, the more we do on spam, the more we can positively impact customer satisfaction," Mr. Leonsis stated.

Mr. Leonsis also announced that, since April 2003, two million AOL members have reviewed and signed the "AOL Antispam Petition" in a strong demonstration of support for the Company's efforts at the Federal and state level to forge partnerships with industry, consumers, policymakers and lawmakers. AOL provided members an opportunity to electronically sign a petition starting in May 2003 calling on state and federal officials to work towards laws to curtail fraudulent and offensive junk e-mail. The petition had been signed by one million AOL members as of September 30, 2003.

It was Mr. Leonsis' second appearance before the Committee on spam, having first testified on behalf of AOL and its members almost exactly one year ago, on May 21, 2003. During that time, he said the company has taken a number of aggressive, proactive steps to tackle spam, including:

-- launching antispam member education and awareness campaigns;

-- creating an antispam community called "Spamfighters";

-- introducing new software called AOL 9.0 with adaptive spam

filtering; a new 'Spam Folder'; better Mail Controls; a Custom

Word Filter list; and the ability to disable offensive images

in email;

-- enhancing and improving spam filtering at AOL's email gateway,

guided by the leadership of the Company's 24/7 Antispam, Mail

Operations and Postmaster teams;

-- pursuing spammers through lawsuits filed in Federal Court in

Virginia April 2003; in Federal court in Florida in February

2004; in Federal Court in Virginia in March 2004, using the

new Federal CAN-SPAM law; and by working with the Virginia

Attorney General in December 2003 to file the first ever state

criminal indictments of spammers;

-- working with state lawmakers in various states to encourage

passage of tough, targeted antispam laws that mirror the

Federal CAN-SPAM law at the state level; and,

-- Collaborating with key industry stakeholders in a partnership

to fight spam - especially Microsoft, Yahoo! and Earthlink, as

part of an antispam alliance that is pursuing technical and

enforcement solutions to spam fighting.

"Clearly, we've been busy at AOL. But we've had to be. Spammers don't take breaks, and neither do we...Inaction on spam is a luxury we cannot afford at AOL, and it's something our members would not tolerate," he stated.

"We've learned from the spammers and we're using their own tricks and ploys against them. Instead of strictly being in a reactive position, we continue to do things proactively to disarm the kingpin spammers before they try to click on the send button," Mr. Leonsis stated.

Mr. Leonsis stated that because of these combined and sustained efforts at AOL, he was able to report a decline in the number of spam emails members were seeing in their inboxes: "...the volume of spam emails getting through to our members has dropped, even while the number of attempted spam messages have increased somewhat. That means one thing - while the spammers are getting more desperate and aggressive, AOL spamfighting is just getting better."

"But we're not going to rest," he testified. "We are not in any way finished. While confidence is high, the mission is not yet complete, and there is much work to be done."

-- Editor's Note: Copies of Mr. Leonsis's prepared oral and

written Congressional testimony, as well as a screen shot of

AOL's "Antispam Petition," will be available at

http://corp.aol.com/press/press_release051904.html

About America Online, Inc.

America Online, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX). Based in Dulles, Virginia, America Online is the world's leader in interactive services, Web brands, Internet technologies and e-commerce services.