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Thread: AOL tentacles - a newbie question

  1. #1
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
    Posts
    10

    AOL tentacles - a newbie question

    I am a newbie and I am posting this question re: AOL because I believe it may be relevant to
    security issues -

    I recently uninstalled AOL IM because, like other AOL software, it seemed to take over my computer.
    I'm using Win98 and I went to Start/Find/Files or Folders and typed in AOL -

    MY GOD!!

    LOOK AT ALL THOSE DAMNED AOL FILES!! WHERE THE HELL DID THEY COME FROM??!!

    Well, it was like flicking the lights on in the kitchen and seeing cockroaches everywhere.

    Those files gotta go.

    So how does this relate to security? I believe that if a software company can drop that many files
    your hard drive without your knowledge (and I suspect it happened whenever I loaded any
    major store-bought software which AOL is included with - i.e. anything bought in a store)
    that anyone else, with a little work could drop this much software into your harddrive.

    Can I go to Uninstall, or back to that pathway I mentioned at the top of this message, highlight
    all those AOL files, and hit delete? Or are have some of these files married themselves to
    critical files in my system? I hope other newbies will benefit from this.

  2. #2
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Posts
    356

    Re: AOL tentacles - a newbie question

    Originally posted here by dmedici
    LOOK AT ALL THOSE DAMNED AOL FILES!! WHERE THE HELL DID THEY COME FROM??!!
    erm, all WHAT files? there may be lots of different programs that use dll's/other files that have "aol" in the name, so its kinda important to be spefic about exactly WHAT files you are refering to.

    So how does this relate to security? I believe that if a software company can drop that many files
    your hard drive without your knowledge (and I suspect it happened whenever I loaded any
    major store-bought software which AOL is included with - i.e. anything bought in a store)
    that anyone else, with a little work could drop this much software into your harddrive.
    erm, well i can say that i am about 99% sure it was not installed by store-bought software without asking first, and it does take more than just "a little work" to just push software onto sombody's HD...even when they are running M$ software.

    Can I go to Uninstall, or back to that pathway I mentioned at the top of this message, highlight
    all those AOL files, and hit delete? Or are have some of these files married themselves to
    critical files in my system? I hope other newbies will benefit from this.
    well, as i said before, that would depend greatly on what the files actually ARE. the first thing i'd do would be to go into "Add/Remove Programs" in the controll pannel and remove AOL if its listed...after that i wouldn't indiscrimimantly delete files.
    -8-

    There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary, and those who dont.

  3. #3
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Posts
    4,785
    i have aol installed on the box on on. did a find file 'aol' and i only got 31 files. although they all actually belonged to aol thats not to bad for a program that size, i expected more.

    maybe you spend a lot of time on aol's network and get lots on aol cookies, html and graphics files.
    Bukhari:V3B48N826 “The Prophet said, ‘Isn’t the witness of a woman equal to half of that of a man?’ The women said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘This is because of the deficiency of a woman’s mind.’”

  4. #4
    The best thing that you can do is send aol where it belongs -----> the garbage.Get a real ISP like
    www.escape.com or www.earthlink.net.Aol is sneaky like that,it installs alot of bullshit into the registry and yes it just might attach it self to important files.do a really good clean up of your registry and i bet that even after you will still find some aol **** in there somwhere.Even netzero is better than aol.get rid of it you wont regret
    it.If you really want aol than get a bullshit box that you use for testing stuff and put aol on that.

    crimina1

  5. #5
    Yo dmedici,like crinina1 just mentioned try looking through your registery,but i see you are a AO newbie and you may not know how to edit/be convident editing the registery.If this is true try downloading a free registery editor like I use called regcleaner you can find it at http://www.jv16.org.Please bare in mind that even with a registery editor you should still be careful what you delete.But if you only delete regisery keys from programmes that you have already un-installed then you should be safe.
    If l0vε aint å g4mε,thεn h0w c0mε thεrε arε §0 m4ny p|4yεr$?

  6. #6
    Damn I messed up the link here it is again http://www.jv16.org




    -Sh4d0wX
    If l0vε aint å g4mε,thεn h0w c0mε thεrε arε §0 m4ny p|4yεr$?

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