AOL & Escorts

[Guest Quinte]

Hey guys, I have found aol is being "difficult" with my escort profile (IM) and have infact frozen/deleted my account. Any solutions short of setting up another one? Similar stories anyone?

 

I normally do not "hang" around chat rooms but use the IM for clients & other escorts who have already met me, to stay in touch.Thanks!

 

Quinte

http://www.rentboy.com/quinte

[ted]

I know of at least 2 other escorts that have had problems. One had his account deleted twice. According to him, its not where you hang out, its what's in your profile or homepage if you have one.

[OceanTraveller]

Ted Matthews from LA has evidently had his website removed!!!! I was trying to get his travel schedule and could not pull it up. It is also on AOL. :-(

[Guest Tampa Yankee]

Escorts will be much better off if and when they set up Web sites independent of AOL. The AOL police are scouring the country side to cleanse their landscape of questionable screen names and web sites (my view). I have seen several such among the missing -- had two emails bounced day before yesterday.

 

I recommend escorts stay free of MSN too -- MSN may be a little more liberal, for now, but they are a pain in the ass for Netscape and/or Mac users, also sluggish performance, in my assessment.

 

Just a recommendation...

[Guest Quinte]

Thanks for all the info guys... I know a little more now, and yes, AOL is doing a "clean" up. I am aloowed to set up a new account with out the word escort in it.

 

Quinte DuSoleil

 

http://www.rentboy.com/quinte

http://communities.msn.com/qdus

nubiandreams@hotmail.com

[HooBoy]

I have connections who can get escorts set up with websites & email that will allow their services and at a decent rate.

 

As for communicating via AOL, you can always do that with AIM and not even have an AOL account.

 

I'm inundated with projects and work and I may be slow to get back to you, but I will if you email me.

 

These people can handle everything from getting you registered with yourname@yourname.com to complete design and implementation and far lower prices than you will find anywhere

 

Forget about using AOL. it's like renting a trailer home. The tornado is going to take it out and you've got to get a new address and lose track with all your old friends.

 

HooBoy

Email: HooBoy@male4malescorts.com

[Guest Tampa Yankee]

HooBoy highlights an important point -- escorts need a stable email address and web presence because your business is your contacts and when AOL suspends your accounts, even if they offer replacements, they DON'T offer forwarding from your old addresses/urls to the new ones -- why is that?.

[Boston Guy]

Yes, well, perhaps. But if I'm in a new city, the first place I look is on AOL. And I usually will make a happy choice from the guys there and I am seldom disappointed.

 

From the people I talk to, it seems that more and more clients are turning to AOL -- doing online searches and using the appropriate chatrooms -- to find escorts. It's just too easy, too fast, and too convenient to favor other methods now. And once someone is located, you can chat with them online for a few moments in relative anonymity before either of you makes a commitment to get together. That helps both the escort and client avoid meetings where one or the other would end up being unhappy.

 

Say what you want about AOL. But from the standpoint of this (very) frequent traveller, it's a client's best friend and resource. And guys who aren't on AOL generally don't even make the first cut.

[Guest bottomboykk]

I agree. As frustrating as AOL can be, it's a great source for escorts and hookups with other guys.

 

I've seen a lot of escorts who do things in their profiles to confuse the autosearching capabilities of the AOL police. Instead of using the term "escort," use a variant like "s-cort". The reader will understand, but the autosearch will not catch it. In listing an URL, put spaces in it; it won't be clickable, but it's easily understandable by the reader. I'd recommend not using AOL for your actual web page, but put the URL to your actual web page in your profile in the above manner. Also, make sure your screen name is not too blatant.

 

This at least will keep your presence on AOL intact (most likely). This in no way precludes you from setting up something like HooBoy talks about. But I think it's important to maintain a presence on AOL.

[Guest Sean]

Putting your URL in your AOL profile is against AOL's terms of service. If the link has nudity. Also you can't discuss what you do and don't do in your profile or list your dick size. All of this will get you either a TOS letter or your account terminated.

[Guest Tampa Yankee]

Boston Guy,

 

I grant your point about chat rooms for contacts and I think it useful for escorts to maintain a presence on AOL if they intend to use them -- but it can't be their primary web presence unless they intend to limit their customer base to the chat rooms.

 

bottomboykk

 

I think your kidding yourself about fooling the AOL search algorithms, at best your just putting of the inevitable a while longer, but eventually they will detect their offenders, most of them anyway, with the attendant loss of contacts which must be rebuilt from scratch.

 

Bottom line as I see it -- if you want an AOL web presence play it straight by the rules, use it only for chats and to receive email from chat connections, or other parties already in previous contact. Use an alternate web site for your explicit business activities and figure a way to refer AOLers to that web site while not violating AOL's TOS. I admit, in view of Sean's comment that I don't have an immediate suggestion on how to go about the referral, but I'm sure there is a way -- there usually is when talking about the internet.

[Boston Guy]

It's actually simple: put a note in your profile to "IM or email me for a link to my web page."

 

Not having the word escort in an escort's profile is a big mistake, in my opinion. Likewise omitting all of the variants of the escort's geographical area of service (i.e., "NYC", "NY", "New York", "Manhattan", "New York City").

 

I know many escorts who leave themselves logged on most of the time now, using the AOL timer busters. They hardly ever go to the chat rooms, except sometimes to the 'escort m4m' or 'escort m4m nyc' variants. And they get lots of IM's and emails from guys doing AOL searches.

 

From a client side, searching with 'escort' and the name of the area you are looking for and using advanced search to limit the results to only men will generally pull up a fairly large number of guys in any fairly urban area. Further restricting the search to guys who are online will either bring the ones who are staying online or the ones who are searching for clients at that moment.

 

It simply couldn't be easier -- sort of like being a little boy in a candy store!

[Barry]

Everyone seems to have a love/hate relationship with AOL. Personally, I won't use them anymore but I do understand the convenience of AOL, access numbers almost everywhere and huge subscriber base.

 

However it's best to be an informed consumer so in addition to the knowledge that they will delete web pages, email accts etc. (often without warning), allow me to share some recently published personal security and privacy issues with AOL. This is taken from the Langalist Newsletter.

 

Steve Gibson (of "Shields Up fame---http://grc.com ) sent out a security alert yesterday:

 

Hello fred,

 

The NetZip, Netscape/AOL, and Real Networks Download Utilities *ARE* Spying On Us!

 

NetZip's "Download Demon" was purchased by Real Networks and renamed "Real Download". then Netscape/AOL licensed it from Real and called it "Netscape Smart Download." By watching the "packet traffic" flowing in and out of one of my machines while downloading a file through the Internet, I verified the rumors which you may have heard regarding these programs All of these

programs immediately tag your computer with a unique ID, after which EVERY SINGLE FILE you download from ANYWHERE on the Internet (even places that might not be anyone else's business) is immediately reported back to the program's source where it is logged and recorded along with your machine's unique ID. They also have the opportunity to capture and record your machine's

unique Internet IP address.

 

This information is then compiled and used to create a detailed "profile" about who you are based upon the web sites you visit and the files you have downloaded. Perhaps you don't mind being

watched and tracked as you move around the Internet ... and then having every file you download logged and cataloged and used to assemble "your profile". But the idea of this seems extremely invasive to me, and unless you have carefully read the program's license you might not be aware that this is going on or that

"you agreed to it" when you accepted the terms of the license!

 

More than 14 Million people are already using the original NetZip Download Demon. NetZip knows the exact number, since every copy of their program "phones home" to report on what their users are doing! And I'm sure people are downloading Real Network's ReadDownload and Netscape's SmartDownload like crazy.

 

A Class Action lawsuit was recently filed against Netscape/AOL because of this privacy invasion, so perhaps the PC industry will begin to receive the message that this sort of secret spying and profiling is not okay with the rest of us, even if it is buried within a lengthy license agreement. You decide. And, of course, the next release of my own OptOut spyware detection and removal utility WILL consider these programs to be dangerous, and warn its users of their presence in their systems. But I wanted to be sure that you knew RIGHT AWAY what was going on, and that I had independently confirmed that this invasive file download tracking really was occurring.

 

What Steve Didn't Mention...

 

Steve Gibson didn't focus on this in the item above, but note that the preferred/default method for upgrading all Netscape browsers also is via Netscape Smart Download.

 

This means *all users of Netscape browsers* will end up in the AOL download-tracking database.

 

Worse, to use Smart Download, you have to register at the NetCenter site--- so AOL/Netscape will have your name, email, and other personal info on file. This means they can (if they choose)associate your downloads with *you* individually and specifically, and not just with some arbitrary

machine-generated ID.

 

This is so wrong it's beyond words. Alas, it's also very, very typical of AOL's abusive approach to end-users; seeing them only as passive targets for advertising. Sigh. Fred Langa

 

I, for one do not use AOL or Netscape and have stopped using NetZip. I do use Realplayer and am concerned about that.

 

Barry

[Guest Quinte]

WOW!!

 

Thanks Barry and others! very helpful. You have only confirmed my concerns. I will create another IM account with AOL, but a non-escort one.

 

Quinte DuSoleil

 

http://www.rentboy.com/quinte

http://communities.msn.com/qdus

nubiandreams@hotmail.com