Giving AOL Hell

In their continuing fight to expose alleged security holes in America Online's Internet service, three high school students, who wish to remain anonymous, are aggressively seeking out users to post their pages on mirror sites. According to the page's publishers, AOL has been threatening their host server with "false legal claims" to choke the truth and have their site shutdown. What's the truth? "There are holes that allow access to e-mail and other accounts in the system," says one of the site's co-creators. AOL spokespersons could not confirm or deny the charges posted on the students' Web site at press time, but did comment that AOL, like any other network serivce provider, is concerned about security issues and is always working to make America Online more dependable. As for the legal claims, Johnson says that they may be true if the students are posting trademarked America Online images on their site. To read more about the ongoing dispute, from the students' perspective only, link over to http://www.online-security.com

From the June month's issue of Internet Underground

The Buddy System

You may not have signed up for it, but if you're an America Online user, chances are you're on the Buddy List. The AOL feature allows users to track the movements of other users on the service. Strangely, the Buddy List is an active preference and has to be disabled at keyword: Buddy.