AOL Blunders, Then Blunders Again
Thursday August 10, 2006
Wendy Boswell, About's Web Search guru, has done a great job outlining the very frightening implications of AOL's major blunder: publicly posting personally identifiable search histories for well over half a million users. If you haven't yet read her take on it, you should. But first, here's blunder number two in as many days from AOL. They teamed up with the very reputable Kaspersky to offer a lite version of that antivirus to their subscribers. But the EULA reads like something out of an adware manual. Here's just one excerpt:
b. Information Use: Your APS Product information may be use to operate and improve the Software; to personalize the content and advertisements you receive; to fulfill your requests for products, programs, and services; to communicate with you and respond to your inquiries; and to help offer you our other products, programs, or services that may be of interest. Your APS Product information may be shared with affiliates of AOL Premium Services LLC ("Affiliates"). Affiliates that receive your APS Product information may use this information according to their applicable privacy policies. As a condition for your use of the Software, you agree to receive promotions and periodic e-mail messages from us and our Affiliates.Other parts of the EULA are even more interesting, warning users about possible dire consequences of removing the very types of programs the scanner is designed to remove. Kaspersky is one of the oldest and most respected vendors in the antivirus industry and even though they've gone through some management changes that make them a lot more marketing driven, it's doubtful they were aware of any of this when they agreed to the partnership.
AOL bills the service, which they've dubbed Active Virus Shield, as "Free for Everyone...a new service courtesy of AOL". With courtesies like this, the price of free might just be too high to afford.
As AOL users, we thank you for this. The things they never tell us!
As an example of AOL goof ups; we almost never if ever use the AOL browser because it’s a convulted messed up version Internet Explorer (IE was blocking pop-ups LONG before AOL allowed it! AOL actually TURNED THE FEATURE OFF in “their” IE version!)
Another comment re AOL: we always are aware and tend to avoid ANY AOL PC “fixes” (such as their “PC Checkup”) because we have found that independent software tends to work better and be more throrough.
Not to excuse AOL for these stooooopid things, but:
We mainly use AOL because we love the e-mail (best I ever used even if they were one of THE last to scan for virii), love the free radio, and we have had it since version 3. We have lived thru a lot of goofups but it still beats them all as far as we’re concerned, especially MSN and Outlook Express (ugh!)
THANKS!