Hi EG~,

From my observations of the "newest members" section of the Statistics page and looking at "who's online" (it shows you people registering) I would say that the average turnaround is within 24 hours, and certainly no more than 48. It may take a day longer at the weekend or when there is a national vacation?

I do believe that you have raised another possible issue though As we all know, spam has become more and more of an issue over the past two or three years, and ISPs, mail providers and corporations/organisations have tended to implement progressively more aggressive filters.

I wonder if the AO response might be getting trapped by some of these? I could see this happening where blocking is done on a geographical basis using IP address blocks.

In reality though, I would have thought that someone savvy enough to want to join AO would know what their e-mail provider was doing and at least look to see what goes into the spam folder.

I am aware, like yourself, that there are a large number of accounts apparently "awaiting confirmation"................... that is NOT confirmation by us, that is confirmation by the applicant. In other words, the account has been approved.

Hope that helps