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AOL Cookie "Hoax?" (10/13/97)
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Many of you have probably received a copy of that chain email letter going around warning people that AOL 4.0 for Windows is a huge security hole. Predictably, AOL claims that the warning is a hoax.
If you were one of the six people on the planet who didn't receive a copy, the letter, ostensibly penned by two former AOL programmers, claimed that there was intentional code in the new software that stores a "cookie" on the user's hard drive. However, this isn't a "cookie" in the normal irritating Netscape sense-- this is a cookie from hell that renders your personal files and finances openly accessible to Steve Case and his cronies. The letter certainly reads like the typical internet hoax, and the rational mind finds it both technically and logistically unlikely that AOL would pull something quite this heinous, so most people are accepting that it's all just another net myth, like the "Good Times" virus.
Of course, we know the real story: BIG FAT CONSPIRACY!! After all, we are talking about the same AOL who quietly doubled their standard monthly rate by default (for "unlimited access" that no one could penetrate the busy signals to use); who planned to quietly reverse their written privacy policy and give members' phone numbers to their telemarketer buddies; and who, despite being the online service with the highest SPAM-to-content email ratio on the planet, even went so far as to consider putting advertisements in the body of every email message sent or received. Heck, if you told us that AOL was going to start requiring members to be fitted with surigically-implanted tracking devices to monitor their offline shopping patterns, we wouldn't even blink.
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 10/13/97 episode: October 13, 1997: (Sorry—this was before we started writing intro text for each episode!)
Other scenes from that episode: 80: The M$ing of Apple (10/13/97) A scant two days after we mentioned an example of the outrageous cost of Microsoft support, Apple goes and declares they are adopting the same model: free web-based support (woo-hoo), free automated phone support (yippee), free phone support for the first 90 days of ownership (huzzah), and $35 a call for phone support thereafter... 82: Rumors "Server Outage" (10/13/97) While we're on the subject of conspiracy theories, we're all a little nervous here at AtAT. After all, a scant two days after Mac OS Rumors dropped the top-secret bomb that Oracle and UMAX were going head-to-head to buy out/merge with Apple, their site is unreachable due to "continuing server troubles." Yeah, right...
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