Removing Ads in AOL

After writing nice about AOL, I promised I’d point out another annoyance along with a simple fix. It’s almost comical how AOL finds new ways to advertise everything and everywhere on its service. It’s personally ironic when I remember back to the early 90’s when I managed the AOL client software. We ridiculed and made fun of Prodigy for including ads on every screen.

I know most of my readers no longer use AOL but this is just too much. The subject line may also attract as many new readers as my articles on removing Zwinky.

The newest insult to “paying” AOL customer comes when they send an Email. Not only does the “Your mail has been sent” window come with an ad, some of the advertisements are complete video commercials.

Not all my machines with America Online include this feature so I assume it’s being rolled out with some kind of “no choice” auto-update. While I seem to have plenty of bandwidth and horsepower, I don’t like AOL slowing me down anymore than needed.

Luckily, this one is easy to remove although you’ll lose your confirmation notification in the process. Just click on the “Mail Settings” link and you’ll see the following. Remove the checkbox in front of “Confirm that mail has been sent” and the ad will go away.