AOL Eavesdrops, Grants Itself Permission To Steal Your AIM Conversations

AOL has some new "Terms of Service" for those who use their AOL Instant Messaging servers, and it's pretty crazy:

Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this Content. In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses.
I'm keenly aware that by communicating with friends and colleagues via AIM, it's easy for someone to eavesdrop on our conversation. I know that anyone on the network can see what I'm passing back and forth, and thus try to not to have too many highly sensitive conversations via AIM. Nefarious observers of packets have always concerned me, but I never thought to be concerned that the company providing the service would share that information.

Millions of people use AIM as a tool to share incredibly personal stories and don't assume that their personal conversations will show up in AOL's marketing materials or other places, especially without their consent. AOL has created a basic expectation of privacy, while secretly sticking in their legal documents that there isn't any. That AOL even thinks it's ok for them to collect these millions of intimate personal conversations is bad enough, but that they grant themselves the right to broadly use such material is simply not acceptable.


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That's wrong, I bet most of the people that use AIM don't even know about this... there should be some kind of law against this or something.... makes me sick

I never liked AOL.. one of the first ISPs i used, but that was long time ago.

I wonder if that still applies if using AIM through multi-chat client like Trillian pro... I doubt it. One of the prices you pay when you use a free product... anonymous stats and your privacy is compromised

I HATE AOL ! If you want my advice, uninstall anything AOL related on your computer. Then, do a search for "aol" and see what it finds. For me it usually finds at least 30 things. Not to mention that many registry values are still left behind by AOL many of which cause security loopholes !

AOL was the first ISP I ever had, and I hated it then, and I still hate it ! It $uck$ !

Sorry for being so angry, but AOL and Microsoft are the two companies that piss me of the most. Bunch of greedy &^$%#$^#$%#* !!!!

Ahhhh....I feel much better getting that out

lol yea same for me... those fags lie to all the "non-technical people" and trap them into their monoply they trap you in a monoply within a monoply since you have to have Windows to use AOL.....