[12898] in North American Network Operators' Group
True or Spam Hoax?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Neil Villacorta)
Wed Oct 15 19:45:51 1997
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 16:33:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: Neil Villacorta <neilv@metacreations.com>
To: nanog@merit.edu
cc: mac_the_knife@macweek.com
Anyone know if this true?
I got it forwarded from an employee of ours.
:-) neil
===========================
ALLEGEDLY ------------------------ From a former AOL employee:
I'll try and cut through the crap, and try to get to the point of
this letter. I used to work for America Online, and would like to remain
anonymous for that reason. I was laid off in early September, but I know
exactly why I was laid off, which I will now explain:
Since last December, I had been one of the many people assigned to
design AOL 4.0 for Windows (AOL 4.0 beta, codenamed Casablanca).
In the beginning, I was very proud of this task, until I found out the
true cost of it. Things were going fine until about mid-February, when
me and 2 of my colleagues started to suspect a problem, an
unexplainable 'Privacy Invasion', with the new version. One of them, who
is a
master programmer, copied the finished portion of the new version (Then
'Build 52'), and took it home, and we spent nearly 2 weeks of sleepless
nights examining and debugging the program, flipping it inside-out, and
here is what we found.
Unlike all previous versions of America Online, version 4.0 puts
something in your hard drive called a 'cookie'. (AOL members click
<A HREF="aol://4344:1047.g334.8411481.532897009"here</A for a
definition). However, the cookie we found on Version 4.0 was far
more treacherous than the simple internet cookie. How would you like
somebody looking at your entire hard drive, snooping through any
(yes, any) piece of information on your hard drive. It could also read
your password and log in information and store it deep in the program
code.
Well, all previous versions, whether you like it or not, have done
this to a certain extent, but only with files you downloaded. As me and
my colleagues discovered, with the new version, anytime you are signed
on to AOL, any top aol executive, any aol worker, who has been sworn to
secrecy regarding this feature, can go into your hard drive and
retrieve any piece of information that they so desire. Billing, download
records, e-mail, directories, personal documents, programs,
financial information, scanned images, etc ... Better start keeping all
those
pictures on a floppy disk!
This is a totally disgusting violation of our rights, and your right
to know as well. Since this is undoubtably 'Top Secret' information
that I am revealing, my life at AOL is pretty much over. After
discovering
this information, we started to inform a few other workers at
America Online, so that we could get a large enough crew to stop this
from
happening to the millions of unfortunate and unsuspecting America
Online members. This was in early August. One month later, all three of
us were unemployed. We got together, and figured there was something
we had to do to let the public know.
Unemployed, with one of us going through a divorce (me) and another
who is about to undergo treatment for Cancer, our combined financial
situation is not currently enough to release any sort or article.
We attepted to create a web page on three different servers containing
in-depth information on AOL 4.0, but all three were taken down
within 2 days. We were running very low on time (4.0 is released early
this
winter), so we figured our last hope to reveal this madness before
it effects the people was starting something similar to a chain letter,
this letter you are reading. Please do the following, to help us
expose AOL for who they really are, and to help us and yourself recieve
personal gratification for taking a stand for our freedom:
1. Forward this letter to as many people as you can (not just
friends and family, as many as you can!)
2. Tell people who aren't on America Online in person, especially
important people (Private Investigators, Government workers, City
Council)
3. If the information about the new version isn't exposed by the
time aol is released early this winter, for your own protection, DON'T
DOWNLOAD AOL 4.0 UNDER ANY CONDITION !!!
Thank you for reading and examining this information. Me and my
colleagues
hope that you will help us do the right thing in this situation. Enjoy
America
Online (just kidding!).
Regards,
A former AOL employee
