Gripes about America OnLine AOL

AOL can't distribute their version 6.0 Software. October 30, 2001. CNET News.com.and San Jose Mercury News. A federal judge has ordered AOL to temporarily stop distributing its AOL 6.0 software, saying its decision to bundle MP3-playback software licensed by AOL subsidiary Nullsoft from PlayMedia Systems likely violates the terms of that license, which restricted its use to "within Winamp." "PlayMedia has established probable success in proving that AOL exceeded the grant of the license," said U.S. District Judge Howard Matz. If upheld, the ruling could force AOL Time Warner to pay millions of dollars in damages, marketing expenses and costs to retrieve or alter existing copies of their version 6 software. PlayMedia is seeking $47 million in damages. The AOL version 7 is not effected by this ruling.

Harris Files Suit Against AOL Over Blocking of E-Mail
August 3, 2000. The New York Times. By Laurie J. Flynn
Harris Interactive, which regularly conducts surveys of 1.5 million participants, is suing America Online and other ISPs it claims illegally block e-mail from Harris to its survey participants. Harris contends it never sends unsolicited mass mailings and that all of its survey participants have registered to receive questionnaires. The suit also includes an antitrust complaint against AOL, whose own online market-research company, Digital Marketing Systems, is a direct competitor to Harris.
America Online Sued for Blocking E-Mails
August 1, 2000. The same story as above from washtech.com. This article quotes a Harris spokesman as saying that AOL's browser also restricts AOL users from visiting Harris' Web site.

Lawsuit Says You Can't Escape Netscape
July 6, 2000. The Standard. The latest lawsuit accuses America Online's subsidiary Netscape of illegally tracking Web surfers and violating federal privacy laws. According to the complaint, Netscape's SmartDownload program secretly monitors downloads of .exe and .zip files from Web sites. Netscape transmits information about these downloaded files back to itself, along with an identifying cookie lodged in each copy of Netscape's Navigator Web browser. In effect, it is eavesdropping on you.
Inter@ctive Week magazine covered this story on July 7, 2000.
Wired magazine covered this story on July 7, 2000.
Steve Gibson, a very reliable source, has much information on his web site about spyware in general. As for the Netscape SmartDownload, he says:

users of Netscape's Smart Download utility, who unwittingly joined Netscape's "NetCenter" system, are especially at risk of privacy violation because NetCenter members also have their NetCenter logon ID and their personal email address sent with each file download report!

Fred Langa covered this in the July 17, 2000 issue of his newsletter where he pointed out that all users of Netscape Communicator will end up in the AOL database. He further says that using Netscape Smart Download requires registering at the NetCenter web site which means (quoting):

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.

Lawsuits related to AOL 5.0 software
Small ISP sues AOL April 4, 2000. CNet. A small Internet service provider, Galaxy Internet Services, has sued America Online in federal court in Boston, charging that AOL 5.0 blocks subscribers from using other ISPs.

CNN carried a story from PC World magazine on March 3,2000 about the flood of lawsuits against AOL regarding its version 5 software. Suits have been filed in New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Virginia, Colorado, and Ohio. All the lawsuits allege that AOL 5.0 makes changes to customers' PCs that make it hard, if not impossible, for them to connect to alternative Internet service providers.

Lawsuit claims AOL 5.0 blocks rival services February 2, 2000. CNet. Lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit against America Online on behalf of 8 million customers, claiming that the latest version of its software cripples existing Internet accounts with rival companies.

The Register has also covered this story.
February 3, 2000 they wrote about the filing of the lawsuits about AOL 5.0.
February 25, 2000 they wrote about additional lawsuits against AOL regarding the version 5.0 software.
April 5, 2000 they wrote about a lawsuit by Galaxy Internet Services regarding AOL 5.0 software
February 14, 2001 they wrote about the AOL legal defense strategy for these lawsuits.

As of February 15, 2001 it is expected that this will come to trial in March 2001 in Miami. AOL is expected to argue that their Terms of Service for using AOL states that they are not blame if the software causes you problems. Specifically, it says that use of AOL software is undertaken at the user's "sole risk." On the other hand, the user does not see the Terms of Service until after the AOL 5.0 software has been installed.

The National Federation of the Blind has sued AOL claiming that the AOL software violates the Americans With Disabilities Act because it is incompatible with many voice recognition software programs. These programs allow people to control their computers with their voices rather than a keyboard. If web pages are correctly formatted, the programs can also read aloud the text on them. The suit is pending as of September 4, 2000.

Double Dipping
June 25, 2000. A class action lawsuit is pending against AOL regarding pop-up ads. There are 23 million AOL customers, of which about 2.5 million are on limited usage plans. After these customers use up their allotted hours, they pay for each additional hour. They also pay to view pop-up ads during these additional hours. This double dipping, charging both users and advertisers at the same time for the same ad, is the subject of the lawsuit. The suit, which covers 1994 through 1999, claims AOL doesn't tell people that it counts the time used by pop-up advertising towards billing. The story was covered by CNN and the San Jose Mercury News.

AOL glitch keeps old passwords alive
CNet News.com January 12, 2001. This article describes a problem with AOL web based email. After changing the email password, some people have found that their old password still works.

Unfair Trade Practices Complaint Filed Against Truste/AOL
An unfair trade practices complaint has been filed with the Federal Trade Commission against the TRUSTe privacy seal program and America Online. The complaint stems from the claims made by both TRUSTe and AOL that the "AOL.COM" web site is covered by the program. Only a small portion of the AOL site is actually covered. The member's portion of AOL.COM is not covered and member's personal information, such as screen name and credit card information, is released to telemarketers. AOL is a "Premiere Corporate Sponsor" of TRUSTe. The FTC has taken no action. I first read about this in the August 28, 2000 issue of the Langa List newsletter which had a summary of the story.

AOL glitch lets teens access blocked sites
CNet. July 13, 2000. America Online is scrambling today to patch a hole that allows its Parental Control content filtering system to be subverted, enabling teens to access forbidden Web addresses. The glitch could prove embarrassing for AOL which touts the filtering control system as a safe way for parents to prevent their children from accessing violent or sexually explicit sites on the Net. The bug was discovered by an 11 year old child three years ago, but AOL was not aware of it until CNet called them.

Even "MacGyver" is no match for an AOL security breach. Salon Magazine March 27, 2000.
As a result of security problem with AOL software, a teenager hijacked the AOL Instant Messenger account "MacGyver". The teenager thus corresponded with the victims friends pretending to be the victim. AOL support staffers did not help the victim when he called. AOL refused to discuss the matter with the author of the article until their PR department was informed that a reporter was writing about it, then they restored the AIM id to the victim. A related story from January 2000 describes the stealing of AIM passwords in more detail.

The Browser Hijacking section of www.spywareinfo.com talks at length about the problem of web sites changing the IE home page and search page. They also have multiple solutions. They note that AOL has started doing something similar by placing it's web site free.aol.com in IE's trusted sites security zone, thereby bypassing some security settings. June 28,2002.

Survey: Apple, Dell cause least consumer frustration USA Today. July 11, 2002. Quoting from the article: "Among Internet service providers ... as was the case in other surveys, the world's largest Internet service provider, America Online, fared worst, with customers frustrated by its high price and unreliable connections."

Poll exposes cracks in AOL's armor. Reuters. About 40 percent of AOL customers said they were "clearly dissatisfied with the brand, service and customer support". The company that took the poll said it was the most overwhelmingly negative response to a company they have ever seen. May 21, 2002.

AOL is the least trusted company on the Internet according to a study by Gartner. Thirty seven percent of those surveyed claimed a high level of distrust for AOL; 29 percent expressed similar feelings for Microsoft. Gartner said that AOL received lower consumer satisfaction ratings than Microsoft, both as an Internet service provider (ISP) and an e-mail provider. August 23, 2001. Newsfactor.com BusinessWire Reuters

PC World Magazine did a survey of Internet Service Providers October 5, 2000 (in the November 2000 issue). AOL did very poorly. Among the findings: AOL came in dead last in tests of the amount of data downloaded per second. Of all the ISPs, AOL also had the highest percentage of unhappy customers.

Web sites:
Many of these web sites are devoted to hating AOL. Perhaps it says something about the company that it could inspire so many people to hate it. Others may just be reporting on the happenings at AOL.
www.aolsucks.org
www.aolwatch.org
www.inside-aol.com
www.observers.net

Dawn McGatney runs a web site that reviews many ISPs, unlike the above sites, it is not devoted to AOL. She gave AOL a C-. Her additional opinions on AOL are at "What's Really Wrong with America Online?". Finally, she links to a l-o-n-g list of web sites devoted to hating AOL.

Two bugs with Adobe Acrobat reader (this information came from Adobe): (January 5, 2002)
--In Windows 95, clicking on a link to a PDF file within AOL6 with IE 5.5 installed may take two-four minutes to load. To get around this use a web browser outside of the AOL software.
--In AOL6 software, doing File -> Open will open a PDF file in a text editor. You are informed by a dialog box that the PDF file is not a recognized file type. To get around this, select the PDF file in Windows Explorer and the Acrobat Reader will open just fine.

I regularly correspond by email with someone who uses AOL. This person recently upgraded to AOL version 6. Now when I reply to their email messages, the text in their message is no longer automatically included in my reply. It used to be included with greater than signs in the first column. My email program is Netscape Messenger v4.72. I looked at the source of the email message. It was from "X-Mailer: AOL 6.0 for Windows US sub 10502". AOL now sends the message in two different formats, plain text and HTML, both included in a single message. Messenger displays the HTML version. Specifically, the text version is indicated by "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII". The HTML version is indicated by "Content-Type: text/html; charset=US-ASCII". March 17, 2001.

AOL 6 Cripples Some Computers PC World Magazine March 2001 issue. Many AOL members have reported a slew of problems like these after upgrading.

What People Say About AOL6. Uh-Oh. December 7, 2000. The Washington Post. Leslie Walker. Quoting from the article:
"... I recently helped a friend install AOL on her computer only to encounter technical glitches I could not solve. ... Based on my admittedly unscientific sampling of AOL 6.0 users, as well as complaints logged by the help centers of competing Internet service providers, anyone upgrading to AOL's latest software should not be surprised to encounter problems .... today's complex AOL software is not the same easy-to-use Internet-on-training-wheels that got the Dulles media giant where it is now. AOL 6.0 ... has bugs. Plenty of them.

Fred Langa in his newsletter on December 7, 2000 said:
In this week's "Explorer" column, I recount how AOL6 took my perfectly good, secure, five-element networking setup and changed it to an INsecure 16-element networking setup. Worse, it installed an unusual (VPN--virtual private networking) technology for reasons unknown and unexplained. Worst of all, AOL made no mention of any of these changes: I only found them because I went looking for them. My guess is that most users never would even notice that AOL had made major -- and potentially very unsafe -- modifications to their networking setup. Also, in that column, I'll show you how AOL insists on setting up a VPN (Virtual private networking) connection that potentially gives AOL access to your files and to other computers on your LAN (if you're on a LAN).

Fred Langa in his newsletter on December 4, 2000 said:
AOL6 makes an almost unbelievable number of unnecessary and even dangerous changes to your system's networking setup--- some of them so bizarre even AOL's own support technicians are at a loss as to explain what's going on. (I know: I called them.). At best, AOL6's changes are likely to make your system less stable; at worst, AOL6 may render your system wide-open to hackers, crackers, and other online miscreants.
His newsletter is a summary of an article he wrote called "Do AOL6 and MSN Explorer Destabilize Your System?" in Windows Magazine.

Upgrading from AOL5 to AOL6 does not upgrade your web browser. On a Win95 machine running AOL6, the IE version was 5.00.2314.1003IS which is quite old (as of November 2000 when this was written).

I had a CD-ROM from AOL. The box it came in said it was AOL version 6. The CD itself said it was AOL version 6. I looked at the readme file on the CD and it discussed issues with AOL version 6. Nonetheless, the CD had AOL version 5 software on it! I installed the software on a Windows 2000 SP1 machine that already had AOL v5 installed. It wanted to install itself into a directory called "AOL version 5.0a" or something close to this. That should have been a clue. It installed correctly and I ended up with two copies of AOL 5. The only thing that went well was the un-install. The AOL uninstall program found both copies of AOL v5 on the machine and correctly un-installed only the one I told it to, leaving the original copy of AOL v5. Then I went to browse the CD-ROM again. There were very few files there. According to Windows 2000 there were hundreds of megabytes of data on the CD-ROM. Turns out that AOL hides almost all the directories. On this machine, Windows explorer was set up with the default value of not showing hidden or system files. Had I seen those hidden directories beforehand, when I was browsing for the readme file, it would have been obvious from the directory names that the software was for version 5. February 16, 2001

If you use America Online 6 under a system that was upgraded to Windows XP, you are only allowed to log in three times. Each time it prompts you to upgrade to AOL 7 because v6 is not fully compatible with Windows XP. AOL 7 is a 34 meg download. This problem does not occur on computers with XP was pre-installed. AOL, Microsoft Thwart Users November 25, 2001. (added April 2002)

January 18, 2000. Fred Langa wrote in Windows Magazine about his experience installing AOL version 5 software. Its frightening. He did a very controlled installation on a Windows 98 SE machine that had no prior versions of AOL software. He called the software installation "incredibly sloppy." Below are some other quotes from the article:

CNN carried a story February 7, 2000 that a German trade group warned ISP customers against installing AOL v5 software. They called AOL v5 "crash-prone" and noted that many German ISP customers have been complaining about it. CNN quotes the group "that AOL 5.0 software interferes with other programs installed on a computer, making it difficult, if not impossible, to establish online connections using software from other service providers. In many cases, the entire network functions of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows have been destroyed"

September, 2000. I installed AOL version 5 on a Windows 98 computer that already had AOL version 4. The version 5 software said that it found a new modem. There was no new modem. It did not use the existing modem definitions from the version 4 software, but instead started all over again trying to figure out which modem the computer was using.

September 29, 2000. Business Week Magazine answers the burning question: I installed AOL 5.0, and now it wants to dial AOL every time I start my computer. How do I make it stop?

There is no mention of the necessary system requirements. Neither during the install process nor in the readme file on the AOL CD.

Current AOL members installing the AOL software on a new computer for the first time are given three choices for the type of installation. None of these choices is for installing a new copy of AOL on a computer that had no previous copy of the AOL software. I found the choices confusing and used a best guess of "Add your existing AOL account to this computer".

As part of the install process, you tell AOL your area code and it returns a list of local access numbers in your area code. Fine. However, when dialing these numbers it defaults to dialing the area code. In my experience, this is always wrong. If you need to dial an area code, it always has to be preceded by a "1", but the default is not to dial the "1" and to dial the area code. I had to manually edit the profile of each local access number so that it would just dial the number and not the area code.

There is no option to turn off the horrible squeaking noises made by the modem while dialing. Those of us using a real ISP can go to the Modems applet in the control panel and easily adjust the modem speaker volume or turn it off altogether. AOL v6 ignores this setting. After installing version 6, I tried my best to find some setting to quiet the modem while it's dialing. There doesn't seem to be one. I know enough about modems that if AOL offered the option to input a customized modem init string, I could construct one that told the modem to be quiet. I'm pretty sure that older versions of AOL allowed you to do this. Version 6 does not.

To avoid the horrible squeaking noises, you have to either turn off the computer speakers or use Windows software to adjust the speaker volume before dialing. Then of course, after you've dialed you have to enable the volume again or else you won't hear the whether you've got mail or not.

On two Windows 98 machines, each with internal V90 modems, the AOL software connected to AOL at only 28.8. Perhaps the automatic modem detection leaves a lot to be desired. Perhaps their local access numbers are not really V90. Each machine can connect at V90 speeds when using a real ISP and the machines were in different area codes.

November 15, 2001. Walter Mossberg. The Wall Street Journal. In reviewing the AOL v7 software, he noted that AOL was "worse than ever at hectoring you to sign up for, or buy, its products and services." Installing the v7 software resulted in five new promotional icons being added to the Windows desktop. In addition to installing the AOL software, it also created folders on his hard disk for four other AOL software products, all without notice.

October 19, 2002. On a laptop computer with a small screen, I have the Windows system fonts set to Large fonts rather than the usual Small fonts (Display properties -> Settings tab -> Advanced Button -> Font Size). AOL 7 was apparently not tested with anything but small system fonts. In windows generated by AOL (as opposed to web pages) it very often cuts off the text because the size of the window is fixed and was designed only for small fonts.

October 19, 2002. IE is full of bugs, Microsoft releases patches for it almost weekly via Windows Update. AOL customers may not get the latest bug fixes as its not clear, to me at least, who is responsible for applying patches to the version of IE that AOL ships. A Help -> About command on the AOL version of IE says that it is a modified version of the browser. On a machine running Windows 2000 SP3, the install of AOL 7 included the installation of IE v5.50.4134.0600IS with update versions SP3. However, subsequent runs of Windows Update caused IE 5.5 to be downloaded and installed again. Then it caused bug fixes for IE 5.5 to be downloaded and installed. In fact, after a third go-round with Windows Update, IE lost its AOL icon in the top right corner and reverted to the standard Microsoft icon. At this point IE was at version 5.5 SP2 with a couple other fixes also applied.

FYI: December 3, 2001. AOL 7.0 survival tips. CNet. Despite starting with: "Around my house, we have a saying: Friends don't let friends use AOL" this is not a gripe article.

AOL Plus DSL Equals Installation Hell
March 14, 2001. AOL Plus is the AOL service over a DSL link for an additional $20 per month over the dial-up AOL fee. PC magazine tried it and had a bunch of problems. Quoting from their article: "...based on our rocky installation and given our level of experience, the company's assumption that the average AOL user can configure out this software and hardware is wishful thinking." Among the problems PC Magazine reported: Laptops are not supported, Windows Me is not supported, Windows 2000 is not supported. Their DSL service was not turned on for weeks after the promised date. When their DSL service was turned on, it knocked out the regular phone service. The magazine also found that DSL speed was not constant, there were slowdowns when the service was busy.

Someone I know has AOL Plus. As of May 2001, AOL was nagging their users to convert from AOL v5 to v6 because DSL was no longer going to be supported with v5. This person has tried many times to install AOL v6 and every time it causes drastic problems for the computer.

You've Got AOLTV
January 22, 2001. TechTV.com Quoting from the article: "We took the new device for a spin, but found it wanting because of inexplicable setup glitches, slow performance, and navigational snafus that left our seasoned Internet junkies frustrated. The first two hours of the setup for this supposedly easy-to-install box were a sheer nightmare."

Channel and Web Surfing
January 18, 2001. The New York Times by David Pogue. The author likes the concept of AOL TV but says "...most of AOL's good ideas wound up lost in the circuitry of an overpriced, undertested product that gives mediocrity a bad name." In describing his experiences with AOL TV the author notes that it took three hours for a technically adept user to set it up. He called the keyboard awkward and noted that e-mail did not get to use the entire TV screen. He said "You feel as though you're reading it through the wrong end of a telescope." AOL TV users can not receive e-mail messages with attachments and if they get one, can not even read the body of the message. Finally, there is no address book for email and the AOL documentation warns that many web pages will not look good.

Newly unveiled AOLTV is seriously flawed
November 18, 2000. San Jose Mercury News. by Mike Langberg. Quoting from the article:
"It's stunning, and more than a little disappointing, to see how badly AOL has bungled the introduction of its first `Internet appliance,' a $249 box called AOLTV. AOL has made just about every mistake in the book: The monthly service fee for AOLTV is too high, installation can be nightmarish, the user interface is glaringly inconsistent, and I found at least one significant software bug."

AOL is not compatible with Windows 2000 (as of August 2000). They are working on AOL 5 for Windows 2000 and if you use AOL 4 and upgrade from Windows 95 or 98 to Windows 2000, you could experience networking problems. Microsoft has an AOL patch for Windows 2000. See article in the September 2000 issue of PC World. I have read that the 16 bit version of AOL4 will run under Windows 2000, but have not tried it myself.

AOL is not compatible with Windows NT 4. The 32 bit version of AOL does not run under NT4, only the 16 bit Windows 3.1 version of AOL does.
There is a bug using AOL from Windows ME, but this seems to be Microsoft's fault. Knowledge Base article on it is Q272016.

AOL is not compatible with personal web sites built at www.homestead.com (at least as of July 7,2000). Below is an excerpt from the welcome message that Homestead sends to new users.

SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR AOL USERS
We have discovered that the customized browser associated with AOL does not fully support Homestead SiteBuilder. In order to access Homestead, please use your AOL account as your Internet connection but use a browser on your local computer (as opposed to AOL's browser) in order to see your account and your Web sites.

New computers with Windows 98 (and probably Windows Me also) have AOL setup files consuming large amounts of disk space. Check directory c:\windows\options\cabs\ols for a sub-directory called AOL. You may find files called Aol40au.exe, Aol40ca.exe, Aol40uk.exe and Aol40us.exe. Together they probably occupy about 23 megabytes of space. If you are not an AOL customer delete them. If you have already signed up with AOL, they can most likely be deleted. Even if you want to sign up with AOL for the first time, the latest software can be downloaded from the Internet or it is likely that newer software can be found on the ubiquitous AOL CDs.

Consumer Reports Magazine. January 31, 2001 issue. Inside back cover. Selling It. They describe and picture an AOL CD-ROM that touts 500 Hours Free! However, the small print says "In a month, see back for details". On the back it said "see back for details". The opened the shrink-wrapping and found out that the 500 hours have to be "used within one month of initial sign-on". There are 744 hours in a 31 day month. If you sleep 8 hours a night that leaves 496 hours.

Not content with the above, AOL one-upped themselves. Forget sleeping, they now offer 700 free hours during your first month as a customer. A month with 29 days, by the way, has only 696 hours in it. Someone else (I forget who) said it it's like getting 7,000 free miles from a rental car company for a one day rental.

AOL Long Distance hit with slamming charges May 11, 2001 By Brian Livingston of CNet. AOL Long Distance, a telephone service marketed by America Online, is the subject of an investigation by an agency that's received more than 1,000 complaints of improper credit card charges and unauthorized transferring, or "slamming," of long-distance customers. Since 1997, AOL's long-distance service has been provided by Talk America, a Virginia-based telecom company.

OLD AOL Gripes