America Online Now Blocks over 2.3 Billion Spam Emails in One Day on Behalf of Members.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

DULLES, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 30, 2003

At This Rate, AOL is Blocking about 24,000 Spam Emails Every Year from Going to Each Member Account

AOL Doubles Amount of Blocked Spam in Only 8 Weeks, Through Industry and Member Collaboration

America Online, Inc. the world's leading interactive services company, announced that it has reached the milestone of blocking over two billion spam emails in a single day, when it blocked 2.37 billion spam emails in one day this week, on the eve of the first-ever Federal Trade Commission (FTC) public conference on spam.

Crossing this anti-spam threshold comes only eight weeks after AOL announced it was preventing over 1 billion spam emails from getting into its members' email inboxes daily, effectively doubling the volume of blocked spam emails since March 5.

By blocking well over 2 billion spam emails daily, AOL is now stopping about 67 spam emails per account per day from landing in the email inboxes of its members. At this rate, AOL's anti-spam filters are preventing more than 24,000 spam emails each year from going to each of its members' accounts, which also works out to blocking 1.6 million junk emails every minute from going through to its members.

Joe Barrett, AOL's Senior Vice President of Systems Operations, who participated in this morning first FTC panel discussion on spam in Washington, placed into context the volume of AOL's spam blocking milestone: "If each of these 2.37 billion spam emails that AOL blocked had arrived in standard business envelopes, and they were laid end-to-end - they would circle the globe four times, and then reach the moon...which, frankly, is exactly where our members would like us to send the spammers."

In addition, AOL said that member collaboration on spam fighting was now resulting in up to 9 million individual member spam complaints being sent to AOL daily, most of it using the "Report Spam" button in AOL 8.0. The Company also said that, due to the increased flow of spam on the Internet being generated by the "outlaw" spammers of the world, it was now forced to block approximately 70%-80% of all inbound Internet email traffic as spam to protect the integrity of its members online email experience.

AOL attributed the surge in its spam blocking to a variety of factors: members systematically reporting more spam; the tightening and strengthening of AOL's spam blocking filters; the continuing surge of spam sent across the Internet using fraudulent, evasive and egregious methods; and the fact that AOL is actively working with other providers to target and block specific ranges of IP addresses known to be used by spammers. This last point has successfully resulted in a direct reduction of spam from specific providers by over 99% through provider-to-provider cooperation.

Blocking spam with stronger proprietary email filters is only one component of AOL's ongoing, continuing fight against junk email and spammers. Recently, AOL also announced anti-spam initiatives, such as: improved member email tools in AOL 8.0 Plus; a series of lawsuits aimed at spammers around the country; support for newly introduced bipartisan anti-spam legislation in Congress; and increased industry collaboration on spam blocking methods through the sharing of resources and anti-spam intelligence.

About America Online, Inc.

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