AOL, Thanks for letting me be taken by a phisher

The BBQ Pit
1

I consider myself to be internet and security savy and I know not to follow links to potently unsafe sites,

I vist AOL chatrooms and recieved an E-mail that claimed to have a link to their AOL member page that has pictures on it. The address on the mail was http://hometown.aol.com/A.g.g.i.e.B.3.4.9./ {.'s added to break link}

Because it was a hometown page I felt safe going there and navigated there through the AOL browser.

On the page was a login box for You Got Pictures which is an AOL service. I figured if I was viewing the page though the AOL browser it should have passed my credentials and I was afraid the logon box was bogus so I went to AOL live chat and asked if the logon box was real

Here is the chat log anything in /\ /\ is what I was thinking

1:04:54 AM System Welcome <my name> …
1:04:54 AM System Connecting to server. Please wait…
1:04:54 AM System Connected to server.
1:05:10 AM System AOLTechAXH has joined this session!
1:05:10 AM System Connected with AOLTechAXH
1:05:14 AM System Hello, <my name>. Welcome to Live Technical Support. My name is Ariel.
1:05:16 AM System <my name> stated the question or problem as: Is the login box on http://hometown.aol.com/A.g.g.i.e.B.3.4.9./ really an AOL pictures login or is it fake?.
1:05:18 AM System Are you signed on with the same computer that you need assistance with?
1:05:46 AM You Yes I am
1:06:27 AM You From the AOL browser when I go to http://hometown.aol.com/A.g.g.i.e.B.3.4.9./ it shows what looks to be an AOL login screen but I’m not sure if it’s real or spoofed
1:07:02 AM AOLTechAXH Levy, I understand that you are have questions about a ‘log in’ window that appears on an AOL Hometown page…
1:08:07 AM AOLTechAXH Levy, please give me a moment to check on that URL you just gave me.
1:11:45 AM AOLTechAXH Hello again.
1:12:44 AM You Yes

1:12:48 AM AOLTechAXH Sorry for the delay, and thanks for waiting.
1:13:01 AM AOLTechAXH The page is legitimate.
1:13:16 AM AOLTechAXH Were you attempting to access another AOL member’s homepage when this appeared?
1:13:42 AM You Thank you. Yes I was attempting to access the pictures on that page and it has a screen name login box
1:14:33 AM AOLTechAXH You are most welcome.
1:14:39 AM AOLTechAXH Anything else I can assist you with?
/\Trying the site. Entered my AOL name and hmm now I’m on another AOL page asking for the password and username again. The address in the bar is an AOL page, could the first page be a hoax?/\
1:15:13 AM You When I just loged it in sent me to another AOL login screen that asked for my id and password to access pictures. Is that normal?
1:16:01 AM AOLTechAXH Do you still have that screen visible?
1:16:49 AM You Yes when I log into that box it sends me to http://pictures.aol.com/ap/welcome.do
1:17:09 AM You Can you try the login box on the original site. I think it is a spoofed login screen that I just fell for
1:18:43 AM You I just looked at the page source and saw this code
1:18:46 AM You <table cellpadding=“0” cellspacing=“0” border=“0” width=“100%” bgcolor=“white”>
<tr>
<td align=“center”>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=“JavaScript1.1”>htmlAdWH(‘93212816’, ‘728’, ‘90’);</SCRIPT><NOSCRIPT><A HREF=“http://ar.atwola.com/link/93212816/aol”><IMG SRC="http://ar.atwola.com/image/93212816
1:21:38 AM AOLTechAXH Levy, I also checked on it to verify. It was indeed a scam, and I received the same source code as you.
1:22:00 AM AOLTechAXH Please rest assured that the page has been REPORTED to the appropriate Department for immediate investigation and removal.
1:22:26 AM AOLTechAXH At this time, I’d like to recommend that you immediately change the password you are currently using, to make sure that it is not used to access your AOL Screen Name.

/\ let me see who owns atwola.com hmm accoording to samspade.org it is registered to AOL. It could be real but I’m not trusing it, I’m sticking with my changed password /
AOL, if someone is questioning a site why don’t you try the links and make sure they give what the expected outcome is before saying it’s ok. What if someone not as savvy as myself was scammed and had their account compromised?

I’m really curious what the javascript above does

2

Atwola is AOL’s ad server, and the script is just an AOL popup ad. The “‘93212816’, ‘728’, ‘90’” in the javascript code is telling your browser to open a window that’s 728 x 90, with the banner ad image #93212816. Which, by the way, resolves to an H&R Block ad. :slight_smile:

I’m not sure you were really phished. That screenname works on AOL, and the profile belongs to a married couple (Leo & Agnes – Aggie, I guess), retired, in Florida. She’s into crafts, apparently. And their profile shows that same banner ad.

Either way, your AOL helper there is a twit.

3

And you have gone to AOHell Customer Service and got a name to email this to… right. Just C&P from above and get a supervisors addy and see if you can help fix this problem by reporting it to a place where it will get heard.

4

Not savvy enough to use a proper ISP, apparently. AOL is run by assholes and staffed by idiots.

5

Seconded. Run to a DSL or Cable internet provider, switch to Mozilla and never look back! The extra $20 a month is so worth the lost migrane.

6

As far as I can see, the login form on that page sends its data only to AOL, so I don’t see how you can have had your information stolen, unless AOL stole it from you. To be fair to them, the online help support guys probably don’t necessarily have HTML/Javascript skills, and he did get the answer right first time. If he wasn’t sure it was a scam page, he shouldn’t subsequently have told you it was, but again I feel that a little forgiveness is in order at gone 1am.

In short: you weren’t phished, the AOL guy was initially right, and you talked him in to being wrong. No great scandal. I would get a better ISP, mind you. AOL, blech.

7

I do have cable internet service from Comcast but I still use AOL for some of their chat rooms which you can only get to as a subscriber. And since they are not charging me for the subscription I see no reason not to use it

8

Also the E-mail I recieved said

"Hey wassup… I got my pix on aol membr page if u wanna see…hit me back up sn Hottygal18 soon k?

mwa!
"

Which would not be from a married couple so It’s a pretty good assumption that their account was/is hijacked

9

Sorry, you lost all credibility towards phrase one with the start of phrase two.

10

I go into any chat room and post a link to a bad place and see if I can get anyone to byte. I can make it look good.

Point: Anyone who follows a link in a chat room deserves what they get.

Point: There is no way for any ISP to control what a person types in a chat room without making it not a chat room but a message board with monitored and checked for content.

Point: AOHell never asks for a password in that manner and a long time AOHell user would not fall for any supposedly AOL endorsed site that asks for a password.

No matter what ISP you use and what firewall you have and how many virus checkers you have, if you willy nilly open unknown stuff from strangers, your computer will die. Nothing can protect it from the person on the keyboard.

YMMV except for the idiots who make blanket claims about any ISP or style of net connection. Lots of people do not have a choice.

11

why?

12

That comment may have been valid in 1994, but I fail to see the relevance of it now. Even if you’re among the ever-shrinking number of people who can’t get broadband in your area, there are plenty of dial-up ISPs to choose from, and most of them cost less than half of what AOL charges.

Hell, even many DSL providers are now offering scaled-down services that are over ten times faster than AOL and still cost less.

AOL inexplicably continues to jack up their prices as technology gets cheaper and cheaper, and as they remove more features from their service (e.g. Usenet access).

There’s also the stigma that goes along with an aol.com address. Upon seeing it, half the people on the Internet will automatically assume that you’re computer illiterate.

13

wring, you know me better than that. You read the thread? … right …

My point in that being that anyone (and lot of script kiddies do) can and manny do, no way to stop them and ‘net savvy folks’ do not click on chat room links …

I know what you do for a living so I will not inslut you by saying that you were asking “Why do people try to harm others?” You know all the ‘whys’ already.

14

Well, just cause you can’t see it, does not mean it is not there. I have as good a satellite connection as I can buy right now because the only land line I could get was an ‘sometimes’ dial-up from SBC on old wire that they are not planning on replacing, ever. No Wi-Fi no nothing. The would run a T-1 in to me if I would cough up the line work and the/month charges. Wanna know about the # of thousands that would be?

I use 4 different browsers, which ever does the best on the site I am looking at and they are not all the same for sure.

I have an AOHell account for two things now. One, it is the best, fastest email around for folks that travel. The other reason is travel. You will make the claim that you have another ISP with more ‘non toll’ call access points than AOHell, with better email service for people who might end up in anyplace , town, country on the planet during their travels? I have several other email services. When it comes to the actual time needed to check email, the safety of the email from infecting my computer, I have not found one that is equal at any price I can afford that comes close to AOHell…

As to me being not part of your brilliant crowd, Thank god. I’ll put the I have caught total since I began on the internet against your amount of viruses, spam, trojan, worms, all bad stuff that can come from email or attachments or any of the problems with full time high speed access in comparison with you any time.

You are a typical ‘Outlook’ user. ::: sheesh ::::

See? Being an asshat is easy. I can even do it. Good to see that you are living up to your highest abilities… Being wrong and uninformed.

15

I know how much a T1 costs, but I’m honestly confused as to how AOL is relevant to this situation. If you have shitty phone lines, you have shitty phone lines - AOL and traditional ISPs will both be affected by that to the same degree.

Again, I’m really not sure how this comment is relevant to anything I said.

That’s funny. Six years of free, web-based Yahoo Mail has yet to net me a single nasty. All attachments are checked for that crap before they are downloaded. IIRC, they were doing it long before AOL was, too. Also, judging by the contents of my Bulk Mail folder, their spam filters catch over 99% of that trash.

Evidently you are unfamiliar with the concept of a firewall. :rolleyes:

Nope. I’ve used web-based email exclusively for several years. I have had to support Outlook users, though, and I’ll agree with you that it ain’t pretty.

Project much?

16

I sure hear a lot more people gripping about Yahoo mail than AOHell mail. Do you really want to compare total availability email access time nation wide between AOHell and Yahoo

Get both, then from a standing start, which mail is open and ready to read first?

No comment about the cost and availability and ease of getting online country wide access for the traveling laptop?

Of course I know about firewalls you silly man, that was in reference to, along with the other stuff you said was irrelevant, that was claiming AOHell was nothing but bad.

You said that there hardly anyplace in the country that did not have multiple choice on access. You are flat wrong. Maybe by population but definitely not by location or area. You do know there are people who do not live in cities… Shirley…

Or maybe you believe national advertising? Bawahahaha

You are entitled to your opinion just as I am.

It just bugs me when people like you take cheap shots, under informed cheap shots, and just plain are nasty about others choices.

If you were so right, everyone would do it your way.

17

Over the last couple of months, I (and others) have had occasional issues accessing our accounts. Maybe it’s just temporary growing pains since they started letting their users have a gig of storage. It seems to be happening a lot less lately, so it looks like things are smoothing out.

Before that time, I never had a problem. Ever. Am I to assume you’ve never once experienced a problem with AOL’s email services in that time frame?

Of course, there’s also Hotmail, Gmail, etc. There are plenty of good, dependable choices out there, and they’re only getting better.

According to AOL, their service is actually quite similar to web mail, anyway. AOL is stingy about storage space, though, so Inbox messages are automatically deleted after thirty days unless you manually move them to the Saved Items folder (what was that you said about convenience, again?) or save them to your local system. The capacity of the Saved Items folder is a paltry 20MB.

And you’re paying for that! I have stuff in my free Yahoo Inbox from years ago, plus 51 times more storage space to work with.

'Tha fuck?

Web mail is as fast as any other web site. I fail to see how “I can get to my suffocatingly tiny inbox 1.3 seconds quicker than you can get to your gigantic inbox for just an extra $15 a month!” is a compelling argument.

Beats the hell out of me. I don’t travel, I don’t use dial-up, and I can’t seem to find any hard numbers on the matter - only marketing claims. Of course, most people who do enough traveling for this to even be a concern are doing it for business, so they tend to go to places where there are actually people - not remote villages in the Ozarks or wherever the hell you’d have to be for AOL to be your only choice.

My point was that security-though-a-mind-blowingly-slow-connection is a laughable argument to put forth. Not only does it fail to address the fact that you’ll get the same dubious security benefits from any reasonably-priced dial-up service, but it’s completely negated by the proper use of a firewall when it comes to higher-speed connections.

Sure, the IP address ranges assigned to broadband users are far more likely to be poked, prodded, and port-scanned by idiot script kiddies, but that doesn’t mean a damn thing if the ports aren’t open.

When you consider that AOL has over 20 million users, I think it’s safe to assume that the number of them in that situation is statistically insignificant.

And so are millions of other AOL users, but even they don’t seem to like it:

I’m not taking any cheap shots - just stating the facts. Shit, you’re the one referring to the service pejoratively as “AOHell” even as you defend it.

And if you were so right about the risks and annoyances of Outlook (which you are), then nobody would ever use it. That’s not the case, though; it’s the most popular email client out there.

Unfortunately, a PC is some kind of weird magic box to most (certainly not all - you being a case in point) AOLers. The vast majority of people who use AOL do it because they simply don’t know any better. Talking to people in real life, the most frequent reason I hear for not switching to a better and more affordable ISP is the mistaken belief that AIM will be unusable without AOL. :smack:

18

Clarification: the time frame I’m referring to is the six years that I’ve used Yahoo Mail.

19

With a broadband connection, who would be silly enough to use the AOHell for a browser? ( I do on proprietary sites )

On a SBC out in the boonies one phone line with noise that will only run at a max of 46K, you maintain that there are ISP’s that will run faster than the 46K that AOHell does? WOW !

Agreed, with broadband and a good computer and a good bit of knowledge, you don’t need any ISP other than your broadband supplier. If you are that good, you are running everything with a
“L” distro, right? *Don’t need no stinking Ms for anything… *

I travel to all kinds of places and carry a laptop and have no corporate account to pay the way. No amount of $ will help you in manny , manny places.

I do not tell people whit a free computer from someone like me who redoes the old stuff to give to people with no computer nor the money to buy one nor the money for anything but the cheapest ISP they can find that they are stupid and not in my superior class.

I do tell them about all the ways that it can be done for as nearly free as possible. Not having the money, the education, or the time or temperament ( old folks ) for example, get no snide remarks from me.

I do tell them to stay away from chat rooms if they have no self control and to never believe anything they read as necessarily being true.

Have a great day.

20

I maintain what? Where did I ever say anything like that?

I run Windows 2000. I like games, and find Linux to be more of a pain than it’s worth.

Neither would I, and I think it’s great that you help people out like that.

Or from me. I wouldn’t dream of going Nick Burns on my grandmother when I fix her computer.

You too.