AOL is one of the oldest and most recognized internet service providers and while many people have stopped using their connection portals, millions of people still use the AOL mail services. Even better, AOL now offers free, web based e-mail services. Many people prefer web based e-mails because they can take them along whenever they change their internet providers. The AOL web mail offers plenty of services along with web mail so it makes sense that it is one of the leading web mail providers.

Of course, because web mail is so popular and because there are people who like to change e-mail addresses often and create addresses specifically for newsletter subscriptions, junk mail, etc, there are a lot of AOL e-mail accounts that get hijacked by stalkers and people who like to send "anonymous" e-mails to others. The good news is this: if you have been getting unwanted e-mail from an AOL web mail address, it is possible to do a reverse e-mail search and find out who has been sending you the unwanted e-mail and make them stop.

Your first line of defense when it comes to unwanted e-mail is the reverse e-mail search provided by the web mail provider. If the e-mail is coming from an AOL web mail address, use the reverse e-mail search option provided by America Online itself. Using the web mail provider's reverse e-mail search tool should always be your first stop because it will be the easiest method in finding out who has been sending you the unwanted e-mail and/or spam. This is because it is easier for AOL to check its own records than it is for an outside source to try to check those records for you.

Of course, if the reverse e-mail search provided by AOL isn't successful, there are other options that are available to you. There are many different reverse e-mail search services available on the internet and you should try as many as you can to get the results that you need. If none of the internet based reverse e-mail searches work out, and the unwanted e-mail has become a real problem, you might want to consider hiring a professional search service to find out who, exactly has been sending you the e-mail. In some cases a professional search service is the best way to go because there are many people, cyber stalkers especially, will take many steps to make sure that their identities and contact information remain hidden.

Remember that you need to be taking steps to protect your own AOL e-mail account as well. Make sure that your password isn't obvious and that it is hard to crack. Change it often so that you can reduce the risk of having your AOL web mail account being hijacked by cyberstalkers or people who would send unwanted harassing e-mail to other people.

Your tenacity will also play a big role in whether or not you see success with your reverse e-mail search. The more thorough your search, the more likely you will be to discover the identity of the e-mail address owner.

It can often take a professional investigator weeks to trace back and identify the person behind an AOL screen name and they do this work everyday. Even if the AOL mailer is using, dial up or a proxy server it is still possible for them to be identified.

AOL is one of the oldest email service providers and a person that has used an email account for a long time will leave more of an Internet "footprint" and it will be easier to identify them.

Copyright (c) 2008 Ed Opperman