Anti-AOL

Updated 7-1-09.

Since I wrote this post it's risen to the #1 slots for the keyword searches mentioned below, so to save you time if you're here for the phone number to report a hacked AOL or AIM account: it's 1-800-307-7969.

Tonight I typed "report hacked aol email" into Google and got, among other irrelevant things: "how to hack an AOL account". Brilliant! Just to ensure my fury shot from moderate to severe, I typed "contact aol hacked" next, and got the same damn results....curses on Google. May fire rain down from heaven all over their precious servers. I'm trying to get someone help at this very moment for an account of their's that's been hacked and I CANNOT DO IT. Half of it's Google's fault for not returning the phone numbers this person needs - the other half is AOL's fault for not allowing free members to report hacked accounts (I don't have this nailed down yet, but that's the info I'm working from in this person's email, since I list a number to report hacked accounts here, and I'm trying to find out if this person called it or not).

7-1-09: Got a response from the person who sought my help with her hacked account last night: "Thank you for giving me this number. I had not called it, but I did today, and they were helpful and cancelled the account. Hopefully it's all taken care of. Thank you again!" Whew.

Since I had a feeling she simply could not find the number, I have added the number itself to my links list (you will see it if you look now on the side of the page) so no one else has to go through not being able to find it again. I hate seeing someone suffer for the lack of something so simple - an AOL phone number that everyone seems to want to hide.

While I'm relieved the person who emailed me is now getting help, and also relieved to learn AOL still assists free users who's accounts are hacked, as far as Google goes, after what I saw last night...Google can blow me.

AOL Phone Numbers & Contact Info for US & International Callers

Updated 6-30-08, again on 11-10-08, and again on 6-30-09. Today (6-30-09) I personally called every AOL phone number on this page except for those in England, Europe and Australia. Once every year or so I call these numbers and AOL phone numbers on other websites to keep this list up-to-date. AOL constantly shuffles their phone numbers around and disconnects or reroutes them, so this sort of "in-the-field" work, sadly enough, is still very necessary.

If any US or non-US AOL phone numbers suddenly no longer work or if dedicated phone lines for certain departments suddenly reroute to general numbers, or if you find more phone numbers and addresses for AOL that are not listed here, please let me know.

Cancel AOL By Telephone in the US

General Member Services in the US, toll-free 8:00 am-2:00 am, 7 days a week:

• AOL Member Services in English
  1-800-265-8003 (on 6-30-09, 1-800-265-8003 gives the message that it's "temporarily out of order"), 1-800-466-5463, 1-800-827-3338, 1-800-827-6364, 1-877-773-4462, 1-888-265-8001, 1-888-265-8004, 1-888-265-8007, 1-888-265-8008, 1-888-346-3704, 1-888-849-3200
• AOL en Español (Estadas Unitas soledad)
  1-800-771-7084 and 1-888-265-1111
• Hearing-Impaired AOL Members - TTY Service
  1-800-759-3323
• Cancel AOL by Fax in the US
  1-703-433-7283
• Complain to AOL Corporate, 9am to 6pm Eastern Time, Monday thru Friday
  1-703-265-1000

Dedicated Phone Numbers for AOL Members in the US

• AOL Fraud Dept.
  Report Unauthorized Account Use, Unauthorized Billing, Hacked Accounts
  1-800-307-7969
• Mobile Help
  1-866-265-3019
• Reactivate a canceled account - will reroute if you need a different dept.
  1-800-381-4006
• Access Numbers
  1-888-265-8005
• Email Issues - Postmaster at AOL
  6-30-09: AOL has redirected the phone number for "Postmaster at AOL" to "AOL Premium Features and Services". The "Postmaster at AOL" department no longer exists, so you can't reach it by publicly available phone numbers or email addresses anymore, which I confirmed by speaking to three different (American!) call reps who answered at the number tonight. If you're a webmaster with AOL email issues, the only form of support AOL provides now is a link-list of online tools. Yippee.

Send Complaints to AOL (US Customers)

AOL LLC
Attn: Heidi Jongquist, Program Director
Regulatory Order Compliance
PO Box 65571
Sterling, VA 20165-8806

Ms. Jongquist no longer has a working public phone number.

Cancel AOL By Telephone In the UK

Member Services in the UK:

• UK General (including technical support)
  0117 919 1100, 0844 449 5555
• Cancel by Fax in the UK
  0870 320 2016
• All Callers Outside of the UK
  +44 117 919 1100

Cancel AOL by Telephone in France, Germany, Australia and Canada

Member Services in France:

• 0-800-903-910, 0892 02 03 04

Member Services in Germany:

• 0-180-531-3164

Member Services in Australia 8am to 8pm, 7 days a week (Customer Service, Cancellations, Billing & Sales):

• 1 800 265 265

Member Services in Canada:

• 1-800-265-4357

Cancel AOL By Telephone Internationally

• All International Callers (toll call)
  1-703-264-1184 and +(61 3) 9923 4861

If you're here to get a phone number to cancel AOL, you may also be interested to know how to cancel AOL online, how to file a complaint against AOL, how to uninstall AOL, or you may just want to catch up on some news about AOL.

All I Know About How to Cancel AOL

Here's everything in the known universe about how to cancel AOL. As of July 2007, US residents can also cancel AOL online (the link shows you how).

How to File a Complaint Against AOL

You might be on this page because AOL won't stop billing you after you cancel. In that case, you'll want to file a complaint against AOL (this link gives you the help you need).

Your best bet is to file your complaint with the BBB. Read how filing a complaint with the BBB helped one of my readers get nearly $1000 back from AOL.

See my How-to Section to find more ways to get AOL out of your life.

Note: If you are trying to access help@aol.com, you might have trouble if you put www. in front of the web address. Try this instead: help.aol.com.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not against my own blog. The longer I own it, the more I like the darned thing. I wake up in the morning grateful to have it, since no one else can. It helps AOL users who the call reps at AOL are either incapable of helping, or else forbidden to help, since they have to make their sales quotas. No one can overestimate how good that makes me feel.

What I have become sorely, vehemently against is people who look down their noses at those among us who "still" use AOL. It burns me. I used AOL, goddamn it...if I hadn't, this blog would not have existed.

I'm unhappy with the reporter who I spoke to the other day. If I were to tell you who I spoke to at the Wall Street Journal there might be a few ooh's and ahh's, but I wasn't impressed before I spoke to her (I called her after she emailed me for a phone chat), since I tend to be cynical about mainstream media, and I'm much less impressed now. The story is not, as I led on earlier, so much about this blog, but I don't want to blow her lede in case the WSJ runs the story, so I'll just mention what bothered me most.

Sample Questions

"So...what do you think of people who still use AOL? I mean, isn't it like, wow, get with the times already?"

I don't look down on anyone simply because they "still" use AOL. First of all: I used to use it, and the last time I checked, that didn't make me a slobbering idiot. Second of all: my friends, including people who have helped me get jobs, people who have comforted when I felt like I was falling apart - people who mean the world to me - "still" use AOL. They might be techno-phobes; they might be computer-illiterate; they might be both, but none of those conditions makes them either dumb or willfully ignorant. They just don't know much about ISPs and email services until someone tells them or they finally find out for themselves. I don't see why people should be made fun of for such things - does not knowing much about the Web automatically make you "stupid"?

"So do people still email you from aol.com email addresses? Really? What do you think of them?"

Again she was angling for snark, and again it bothered me. I explained to her that if you're having a problem canceling AOL but haven't set up service with another ISP yet you're pretty much going to have to email me from an aol.com address.

"Free AOL email...a lot of people use that, don't they? Aren't there better options, though, like GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo! and so on?"

Now my face was turning red. Though I was quick to agree with her that there are better email options than keeping your aol.com address, I was barely able to keep my voice from shaking as I said, "The thing with free AOL email is...it's free. So why not keep the free address once you cancel your account? Plus some people have used AOL for years - sometimes 15, 20 years - so their contact lists are extremely long...not being too computer or Internet savvy they don't know how to update everyone with their new email address...so they just stick with [their old one]."

At that point, I hate to say it, I was rolling my eyes and wondering how long it would be before we hung up. I was quite done with her.

I sat at my computer editing the layout you see here for a few hours after our call ended, just rolling around what we discussed. And that was when I decided I was done with snark. Yes, I'm against AOL - as much now, with every drop of energy I have in me, as I was in late 2005 when I started this blog -but I am not against anyone who "still" uses it. My job - the one I gave myself years ago - is to show people why AOL sucks - not belittle them for their choices.

Count me against anyone who is against anyone else who "still" uses AOL.

The "new" AOL UK home page (same old page, if you use AOL.com) soft-launched May 14th. AOL was so pumped they added a direct link to it from their Corporate press release. That's right: they couldn't wait for UK mums to gasp as kids viewed naked women in seductive poses on AOL UK. No other web company would feature nudity on a home page viewed by millions of people each day but this is AOL we're talking about - anything for an ad dollar, I suppose.

Terribly indecent for the AOL UK home page, don't you think?

Click image for full-size uncensored version - possibly NSFW.

I wouldn't want my kids looking at that - would you?

I didn't get in - and stay in - until late on the 14th so I only got one screen grab. It's not full screen or terribly clear (I've cropped and expanded the "money shot" and I'm including the original to prove it's not a product of my editing skills but the real thing). If anyone has bigger/better screen grabs feel free to give us a peek - I checked The WayBack Machine hoping to grab better shots but they stopped indexing AOL UK in 2008.

I don't know how many days the risque photo montage remained online. The same spot on the page now links to a parenting site. Does that surprise anyone? I'd imagine enough complaints poured in that AOL had no choice but to replace naked tree-climbing women with staid-looking parents - the same parents who wouldn't want their kids viewing gratuitous nudity on AOL.

If you catch nudity on AOL's home page (in the UK, the US or India - doesn't matter) and can't wait to share it hit me up on email or leave a comment (if leaving a comment, no inline images - hyperlinks only, please).

A Sample of My Recent Email

    From: [redacted]@aol.com <[redacted]@aol.com>
    Subject: Thank you for your web site... a few questions, please
    To: [me]@rocketmail.com
    Date: Thursday, April 23, 2009, 3:23 AM

    You have done a wonderful service with your Anti AOL web site. I hope you'll be patient with my questions. I have a high speed ISP (AT&T) and they tell me that my free AOL account is just slowing everything down, etc. I've disliked AOL for years but my wife is very concerned about what might happen to our important files, saved emails, pictures, etc., if we remove all traces of AOL from our computer and just go with the ATT service. Also, she's an avid user of instant messaging and ATT does not offer this feature. Do you know how we can be sure not to lose our files, saved emails, email address books, favorite places, etc. when removing AOL? Can all of this simply be transferred over to our AT&T account? We want to retain our AOL email addresses. So, in order to check our email (once AOL has been removed from our computer), would we have to type aol.com into the browser bar to get to the aol page to access our email?

    Thanks,
    Elliott K.

My Response

Hi Elliott,

Sorry for taking a while to respond but I needed time to get my thoughts together to give you the best answers possible.

If you're on a computer with less than 1GB of RAM and less than 2GHz of processor power you may encounter problems with AOL slowing down your computer and Web browsing.

Browsing the Web with an AOL desktop client will be slower than browsing with IE, or Firefox, or Safari for Windows, or Opera, no matter how powerful your computer is - in my experience, anyway. Your mileage may vary.

I would suggest what AT&T suggested - backing up your needed AOL data, removing AOL from your computer, and moving on to a faster browser that will not tie up your computer with so much RAM and CPU usage. I wrote about why here.

Before you ditch AOL altogether, I should probably point you to this...if your computer has at least 1GB of RAM and at least 1.80 GHz of processor power, you may want to switch to AOL 9.5 Classic. I panned it in my first review, when I was running the Beta version, but my opinion of it improved somewhat with the final release. Read the second half of the post, which is sub-titled "Update: AOL 9.5 Is Out".

I tested AOL Classic on my own computer, and the final version worked pretty well, not tying up the computer much at all. Your web browsing may be much slower than it would be in a traditional (non-AOL) browser...that is my only caveat.

[This didn't make it into my original reply: Once you back up your AOL email by following the steps here you can import your email from one version of AOL into another by following the steps here. It's also worth mentioning that AOL offers online file backup but it's incredibly expensive.]

If you're still determined to remove AOL completely, importing your AOL email and AOL Address Book into Outlook is explained here.

Pop Peeper, a free email notification tool with limited reply and email formatting capabilities, can import AOL email that still resides on AOL's servers and lets you send and receive current email from your AOL account. How to set it up to work with AOL is explained here.

If Pop Peeper is not for you, you can try a program called ePreserver. It costs $24.95, and it's specially designed to import your AOL email, your AOL Address Book, and your AOL Favorites into it's own viewer, and/or into Outlook, GMail, or Windows Mail. ePreserver's download and purchase page is here. A tutorial on how to use their program to import data from your AOL account(s) is here.

[This also didn't make it into my original reply: If none of those options are for you, About.com has an almost endless list of tutorials for importing your AOL email into any number of email programs, including IncrediMail, Outlook Express, and Mozilla Thunderbird. You can also try TrueSwitch, which costs $19.95, but is free of charge for existing Comcast and Yahoo! members.]

Once you've imported all of your data from AOL's software, my suggestion is to start here [How to Remove AOL with CCleaner] if you just want to remove AOL quickly and pretty thoroughly, or here [How to Remove AOL with jv16 PowerTools], if you want to be remove it more thoroughly.

To answer your question, I'm not sure what you mean by backing up "pictures" since AOL Pictures and BlueString closed down months ago. I wrote about the closings here.

To answer your other question, you cannot simply transfer your AOL data to AT&T. If you could AT&T would be one hot property, since everyone wants an ISP that automatically imports AOL's data for them. :)

As to how to check your email from now on, if you do go with AOL 9.5 Classic, you'll be able to check your email directly from the AOL desktop client, just as you always have, but if you remove AOL completely, you'll need to sign in at aol.com to check your email online from now on.

As to your wife's desire to use instant messaging outside of the AIM client, there are many options to choose from.

If you want to remove AIM from your computer, I have several tutorials for that (scroll down to the one you need, or let me know if you need a tutorial on it that I don't yet have).

Good replacements for AIM that allow you to use your AOL screen name to sign in and chat are:

• Digsby
• Pidgeon
• Trillian
• Miranda

If you don't mind, I may republish your email and my reply to you (slightly edited) on my blog in the near future to further educate others. One of the biggest complaints I get is that I don't write nearly enough about how to export and import AOL's email, Address Books, and Favorites; the amount of email I get on those topics reflects that.

Thanks for writing to me and for visiting my blog, and good luck getting your computer back in shape.

Sincerely,
Marah Marie
http://anti-aol.livejournal.com

---

Elliott soon wrote me back to say:

Dear Marah Marie,

    First of all, you are amazing. Not only did you answer all my questions (though I obviously have a lot of learning to do about all this)... you actually apologized for taking a few days to get back to me. I had to call my wife into the room because we don't run across folks like you very often. It's a pleasure.

    One thing I noticed from your email is that my system may not even be worth the effort of going through all this. It is a Dell Dimension PC, 4550 series, Intel Pentium 4 Processor at 2.40 GHz. It came with 512MB DDR SDRAM at 333MHz. The computer is 61/2 years old and is left on for 16 hours a day (every day). Do you think that maybe we are dealing with a computer that, even purged of AOL, will still never be very fast (at least not fast enough to notice the extra fast AT&T DSL connection that I pay extra for??

    I would value your opinion before I get further into this process. If the computer is not worth the effort, can you recommend a replacement? Are you an Apple fan?

Thanks a million,
Elliot K.

My Next Response

I think the idea that Elliott's system "may not even be worth the effort of going through all this" is absurd, so I wrote him to say:

Hi Elliott,

Your processor power is certainly more than adequate for surfing the Web, reading and writing email, working with basic photo programs, watching videos online and offline, etc. If your Dell's motherboard supports it, I would suggest bumping up the RAM to a 1 Gigabyte. If it's possible to fit another 512MB stick into a second memory slot, that will be the cheapest way to go; otherwise you might want to make a tiny investment for a full 1GB memory stick - it will pay you back in spades with vastly improved computer performance.

RAM is quite inexpensive these days; good deals are available both online and in places like Best Buy. I was ready to replace my 7 year old eMachines desktop (born in 2002!) that I'm typing this email to you on when someone convinced me to try a simple RAM upgrade first, so I did what I'm suggesting to you: I doubled my RAM from 512MB to 1GB. The difference was huge and immediately noticeable; it was like buying myself a new computer for a tiny fraction of the cost.

I'm sure Macs are fine computers, but as a Windows person who has not used Mac extensively since 1990 I shy away from giving my opinion on whether or not it is worth buying a Mac - especially when the computer you have needs no more, in my opinion, than a RAM upgrade to get it fast enough to do what you need.

---

Any additional advice from readers for Elliott and others in the same boat? The amount of email I get on the above topics is somewhere between frequent and never-ending so I'll take any help I can get. Given the way AOL ties your data down into proprietary formats and makes leaving so difficult, crowd-sourcing the best answers might be the way to go.

What does being a "consumer" mean to you?

When you're using AOL's software or ISP (or both) or visiting AOL.com to check your email, does doing those things make you feel like a "consumer"?

How does it feel to be a "consumer"?

Does the word "consumer" sound cold and abstract? By using it I've reduced who you are to what you do while you use products and services made by a company that, like any other company, cares about just one thing: how much money they'll make while your eyeballs are plastered to the screen.

By calling you a "consumer" I replaced you with statistics on what you do and when you do it so I can plot and plan on how keep you coming back for more.

Let's look at it another way. Let's say that instead of calling this blog's visitors "readers" I called them its "consumers". In return for the precious gift of my reader's time I insult them by erasing their humanity: "So, what are my visitors consuming? Let's go check the stats".

My reason for asking you, my readers, how you feel about being called a faceless herd of "consumers" is this: in case you hadn't heard, today AOL got its new CEO, Tim Armstrong.

He welcomed himself into AOL's quirky fold with a rah-rah, "We're going to make AOL the Magic Kingdom!" pep rally via memo before getting ready to either sink or swim in his new role.

What stood out for me (not much else did) was how often he referred to you - the person who checks your AOL email, who chats on AIM, who visits TMZ and PopEater, and who, most importantly, keeps AOL in business by clicking on ads shown within the content - as "consumers".

Here's one example from Armstrong's note:

Our work together starts today and we’re going to bring back the magic of AOL to our consumers and our partners.

...Billions of consumers and millions of businesses are making the digital migration...

...We’ll make the decisions and the investments that are required to deliver exceptional value to our consumers. Consumers vote with their clicks and the time they spend on our sites, and we need to make world-class products and services that get votes based on a superior consumer experience...

Armstrong repeats the word consumer seven times before he's done.

He calls my readers "people" just twice, both times near the beginning, then quickly abandons it in favor of the vaguer and to my mind, the more insulting word.

He even manages to work the word "consumer" into one thought three different times. That would be like me giving a speech in which I said:

"If more of AOL's consumers would visit my blog then maybe AOL's consumers would see that my blog exists to solely to serve AOL's consumers...."

Sounds silly, doesn't it?

Maybe I will stun the AOLers who will read this by not lauding Armstrong for his "strong" focus on "consumers", but why should I? It's nothing more than Web 2.0 "paradigm meets the grid" bullshit.

Let's rewrite his memo. Instead of the above, what if I re-wrote it so that Armstrong said:

...Billions of people and millions of businesses are making the digital migration. We have a tremendous opportunity to help improve the experiences of everyone crossing into the online realm.

We’ll make the decisions and the investments that are required to deliver exceptional value to our customers - the people who visit our online offerings and who use our products every day. Visitors of our online properties vote with their clicks and the time they spend on our sites, so we need to make world-class products and services that get votes based on a superior guest experience. AOL’s partners and advertisers expect no less than our guests [to be pleased? Tim wanders off at this point, then bounces back with:] and we need to hold ourselves to delivering the best solutions the industry has ever seen.

My edits are subtle but it should be noted: Now he's talking to you. About people. He sounds much more convincing when he sounds like he actually gives a damn - doesn't he?

When you compare how I think Armstrong should have worded his memo with how he actually worded it, it becomes clear why AOL has met the Ice Age, and why Armstrong's name is written all over it.

Readers tipped me off today that something is wrong with AOL's Message Boards: in fact, most of them are missing. The UK Message Boards were shut down with no warning whatsoever.* (See the end of this post for my UK boards disclaimer) Many UK chat rooms were also shut down. No one knows where the US Message Boards have gone. When you click on the "Is this the last board left?" topic which is found one-off from AOL's Message Board home page you're taken to...I kid you not...Yahoo!, where a board exists for AOL members to wonder aloud where AOL's message boards went. It's a bizarre situation.

Some message boards remain - but they're hard to find - and now many look like blogs - when they don't look like pea soup!

On March 31st all of the AOL message boards disappeared. According to Bumped Tek, "On April 1st, the old format boards re-appeared for a few moments then quickly vanished." Even when some of the boards returned later today, they were no longer reachable from search engines (when you click the results link for the Travel Board, for example, you're brought to the main Message Board page). The only way you can access AOL's remaining Message Boards is by visiting them directly from the Message Board home page since the links used up until March 31st (which are still shown in search engine results) no longer work.

Incredibly, most of the newly formatted Message Boards are unusable because the body copy on the Topic Lists is jamming together in clumps.

Welcome! You've got angry customers!

Once you find top level posts on the remaining boards, you'll see that many of them now look like top-level blog posts followed by comment sections. The posts look like articles on AOL News - the format is the same. If you scroll to the bottom of the "boards" a comment form is there. You're not exchanging messages anymore; you're just leaving comments. The AOL Message Boards are now the AOL Message Blogs! The changes have so disturbed AOL users that they've turned the AOL Auto Board into a rant zone.

According to Bumped Tek, "It seems AOL will be moving some message boards over to their blog network..."

Between being unable to find their favorite message boards and unable to recognize them once they're found, I think AOL has done themselves in in the eyes of their users, who seem confused, frustrated and angered by the changes. To be fair (if not too balanced!) AOL gave some warning - a single blog post on People Connection three weeks ago. Still, it seems nothing could prepare AOL Message Board users for this.

Three boards (just a small sample - there are many more) that are no longer accessible from their old web addresses or from search engine results:

• AIM Developers Board
• AOL Travel Board
• AOL Black Voices/Fitness Board

Comments from AOL users:

AOL is a FUSTERCLUCK !!!

So their idea of "changes" is annhilation??

I am clicking my heels three times and reciting 'There is no place like home'. I am so lost.

I didn't get to tell anyone good bye...

...this is the ONLY reason i have kept AOL and if they are going to just force us to use yahoo then why even keep it any longer?

This is a prime example of what happens to American business when it's outsourced overseas. It goes down the tubes!

I'm on Yahoo from an AOL link? Say what???

Me too mona! I signed into my AOL and for some reason got re-directed here...ugh! ugh! ugh! what's even more weird I logged onto my vegasmermaid sn and it came up dragonflie63 which is my account on yahoo! I don't get it!!!

It certainly seems that AOL doesn't give a rat's backside about people looking for intelligent conversation about politics and serious news.

post a link if you find some [AOL] board still open.

Today a quote on this blog about the closing down of the AOL UK Message Boards and chat rooms: "I think AOL have made the decision that they don't really want customers."

Angry about the loss of the message boards? Have any tips on when things will smooth out for AOL users on remaining boards? Want to start an official page on boards that are still open? Want to petition AOL to change the remaining boards back to their old style? Reply below.

* My UK Boards disclaimer: Initial comments left on my blog from people in the UK show some users reacted as though they had no warning whatsoever of the UK Message Board shutdowns, but later comments (below) and even a tip I received - but did not read in time - indicate AOL UK users were given some sort of warning two weeks to a month in advance - every fact is still in dispute as of this writing, though. 4-5-09: So far all I can find on the web is a cache of a board that says UK users were notified by pop-up when they clicked on a "Community Board" link.

4-5-09: Did AOL know five months ago that they were closing the UK boards this year - but forgot to tell CarPhone Warehouse call reps who work for AOL not to leak the information? The message board linked to shows what appears to be a cover-up that went fairly well. AOL simply blamed the Carphone Warehouse call rep who emailed this AOL customer for not understanding how AOL works. Interesting stuff!

By the way, to my new visitors and long-time readers...thanks for mentioning this blog (oh, and good job hijacking the Basketball board)!

Postscript, 4-15-09: AOL restored most of the missing US message boards yesterday, saying "you spoke, and we listened". Well, it's about time, isn't it? A complete list of resurrected boards is here. Folks, it always pays to complain when you don't think you're getting what you deserve - how this story ended is perfect proof of that. Keep on fighting!

Too bad I recently closed comments on this blog [5-7-09: comments have been open again for a while - and I'm still waiting!], because this is one time I wouldn't mind some feedback.

Yesterday I found the rarest of things: an OpenRide Installer. I also looked through the search engines and discovered that AOL customers once enjoyed using AOL Explorer 1.5.

AOL Explorer hasn't been updated in three years, and OpenRide was abruptly pulled from the market shortly after it's debut in 2007, so I installed both of them, being the rare gems among the pile of AOL's offerings that they are.

I was especially curious to know if OpenRide could be removed using the instructions on my blog (it certainly can; it must be an earlier release of OpenRide- not the final - that was giving people problems).

Most of the time I work as my own Beta Tester so I decided to visit AOL's Beta area and download AIM 6.9. Five toolbars and one AIM install later, my computer was so crapped up with AOL products you'd think I worked for AOL.

I removed OpenRide and AOL Explorer without incident, then moved on to getting AIM off of my computer. That went well, too.

From there it was time to remove the toolbars. That, too, went without a hitch - but they were only removed from IE, not Firefox (I installed them in both).

In Firefox I had to go to Tools-->Add-ons to remove the AOL Mail, AOL Radio, AIM, AIMTunes, and AOL News Toolbars. I removed all five at once, restarted Firefox, and my Speed Dial profile was erased, so now I have to manually re-add about thirty URLs to my Speed Dial GUI. It also erased my TabMixPlus profile - I'm still assessing all the damage to my add-ons (it may take a few more hours) but that is NOT what this is about. I discovered something much worse.

Since I'm a huge fan of saving time when cleaning out the Registry of AOL by using tools like CCleaner or jv16 PowerTools 2006, I fired up my copy of jv16 PT and went to work. I did a double when I discovered AIM and various AOL Toolbar Registry keys under the name America Online.

In my jv16 PT tutorial I tell people to look for and remove all traces of America Online registry entries so my heart instantly sank to my knees. Knowing this couldn't be good news for people who remove AOL but keep AIM and various toolbars installed (that's plenty of people, I'm sure), I finished cleaning out AOL and AIM, reinstalled AIM 6.9, fired up jv16 PT and typed "America Online" into the Registry Finder.

Sure enough, over 120 entries tied to AIM came up. This shouldn't be happening, I thought to myself. I saved a text file of the keys, made a Registry backup, completely shut down AIM, removed the America Online registry keys, and restarted AIM to find that most of its graphical interface was missing - no more Buddy Lists, no more "You're signed on as invisible".

In 3 years of removing AOL and AIM I've never seen this happen, so it's possible that 1) before AIM 6.9 existed it didn't happen or 2) it's always happened but I never noticed before. The second possibility irks me, but I do tell my readers to make registry backups before they get started, to make more backups as the tutorials progress, and to read the entries one by one to ensure they're not removing something in the Registry tied to any file, folder or program they may want or need.

The problem is less advanced readers won't know how to restore keys (or which keys to restore) if they need to fix a still-installed copy of AIM after they shred it by deleting those America Online registry entries.

For now my fix will be to edit my pages to say that only AOL keys and entries should be removed unless the reader is sure that no other programs are installed that depend upon America Online Registry entries.

My problem with having to edit my articles to tell people that is this: There is no reason for AIM and various Toolbar registry keys and entries to be in a Registry folder called "America Online" in the first place. What were you guys thinking?

This is Anti-AOL, so I'll be brutally honest: AOLers aren't the only ones glad to see Rondy go. Me, too! Years ago I had this sudden flicker of hope for AOL's future - even if it's past was in rags - when Jon Miller took over.

In light of AOL's "Just cancel the account" fiasco this was what Miller had to say (sort of): "The hell with paid access - let's become an ad-driven thingy and give away everything - content, software, and email - for free." He knew AOL's inability to give people good customer service, timely cancellations, and a decent software suite was entirely intractable, so he chose to move AOL on to greener pastures. I was happy for his arrival and about as excited for him as I could be, considering I'm jaded from years of disliking AOL.

Treachery Ends Jon Miller's Reign

In November of 2006 there was treachery afoot at AOL as Jeffery Bewkes publicly praised Miller as "his guy". The next day, Miller called Bewkes to ask him if it was true that he was finished at AOL. Many people, including those who once worked for AOL, those who still did, and mere onlookers, were puzzled. No one could see why a CEO with a seemingly bright future would be given the ax with no warning only a year and a half into carrying out his plans.

Miller's replacements (there were two people to replace one, which I'll explain later) were Randy Falco as CEO and Ron Grant as COO. Neither person made sense for AOL, since according to people in the know, Falco was a TV guy with no knowledge of the web, did not know how to use email, and was exceptionally terse and unpeople-oriented, while Grant had a personality that - according to those willing to comment - made root canals seem enjoyable. The end of an amazingly brief Golden Era was upon AOL.

You say Randy, I say Rondy...

Falco (a friend of Bewkes when he was hired to replace Miller) and Grant brought much more to the table than their exceptional inability to connect with employees, understand the Web, and plot the course of AOL's future. They also brought a relationship that made them the butt of thousands of jokes: they were inseparable; Falco almost never appeared anywhere without his "Speak for me" guy by his side. Falco was touted by Bewkes as being an "operations guy" who could "fix" AOL but under his tutelage morale and innovation sank so low - and body-counts rose so high - that by mid-2007 it was obvious AOL's future was hopeless if Falco continued to hang around.

Shhhhhhh...

After a bleak 2008 and an even bleaker early 2009, marked by 10% (700) of AOL's remaining 7,000 employees getting the ax, the subscriber base falling to 6 million people from a rumored one-time high of 23-25 million, and revenue falling by 18%, along with total revenue falling by 20% and an operating loss of $1.1 billion, Bewkes sought out Tim Armstrong, the North America Sales and Operations President and Senior Vice President of Google. Of course - just as he did when he knew Miller was out and Falco was in - Bewkes told no one who his new pick was until the last moment.

While the rumor mill at AOL can accurately predict its own layoffs, promotions and demotions, there was not even a web rumor afoot about Tim taking over at AOL; as Kara of AllThingsD noted, that was odd. She claims the reason the AOL Talk Circuit didn't fire up is that no one was told until about two hours before Falco and Grant were fired and Armstrong was ushered in.

Bewkes finally buys a clue...or does he?

Tim Armstrong is given credit far and wide and for making Google's North American ad network arguably one of the strongest, most profitable ones in the world. Whether he deserves such credit is debatable. His accomplishments are spoken of in only the broadest of terms; no one explains what he accomplished to get Google where it is. I would place a question mark next to him - and another one next to AOL's future - until more is said. Judging by one comment Armstrong made after accepting the CEO position, he wants to break AOL away from Time Warner. Should he, or is it too late to save AOL?

Thanks to recent email from "Craig" and others, tonight I checked out jv16 PowerTools 2009. Verdict? There are no performance improvements over jv16 PowerTools 2006.

Semantics?

It doesn't remove "more" of AOL than the 2006 version does, it just does it differently (for instance, jv16 PT 2009 counts 9 leftover "America Online" registry entries, while 2006 counts 11 of them, and 2006 counts over 600 leftover "AOL" registry entries, while 2009 pulls up over 900 of them - and these results occurred after just one version of AOL was installed and removed).

I think the differences are pure semantics....the dev team decided not to base what counts as a registry "key" or "entry" on the same criteria as it did in the past. It all adds up to the same pile of glop being removed, which I confirmed with a few quick tests of both versions and a thorough inspection of my Registry once AOL was uninstalled.

Performance...

Performance differences between 2006 and 2009 are remarkable. In three years the lightning fast 2006 has become a much slower tool that locks up the CPU on my older eMachines (which, just to refresh everyone's memory, has 1GB of RAM, a 1.80Ghz AMD Athlon processor, and runs Windows XP Home SP3). It also takes longer to search the Registry and to bring up and delete results.

On first-run, jv16 2009 used 100% CPU in long spikes, rendering my computer unusable until I shut the tool down. Once I re-opened it, it was much faster - because by then it had cached the Registry and software lists - but it's still much slower than the 2006 version. I don't see why my readers have to suffer through first-run difficulties when both versions of the software do the same things just as well.

This Really Is An "Ax"

And here's a small nitpick for purists who would like to see me update my links, but additionally, jv16 PT 2009 includes powerful new PC System Optimizer Tools that quite frankly should NOT be in the hands of novices. While I "advertise" the tutorial I wrote for jv16 as being for "advanced users only", novices still try it, and I still get their email.

Lastly, to address some questions in "Craig's" email that others may also have: I don't link to the dev's site for the download because he no longer provides an installer for the 2006 version. The copy of it on Media Fire is my own.

And to address general questions on why I skipped highlighting versions 2007 and 2008: same as above - from a performance and safety standpoint, the 2007 and 2008 Betas didn't actually remove AOL (on Vista, but I no longer recall what they did on XP) and they were already showing signs of the slowness and unnecessary, dangerous "feature-creep" that plagues the 2009 version.

"Newer is not always better..."

When I wrote this post I mentioned that I was deleting it once I updated my jv16 2006 tutorial (which, like a few other pages here, needed updating), but on second thought I can see the utility of keeping it here to not have to answer the same questions in the future.