Aol tracing your favorites list?

Factual Questions
1

Im talking to my friend and he says that AOL traces the sites on yourr favoites list. I know its total bs,but I need to prove it to him. Can anyone help?

2

I don’t know but I really wouldn’t put it past AOL to do that.

3

THat being hte favorites list in AOL not an external browser. But now that I think about it I I still wouldn’t put it past AOL to check the standard IE for fav’s

4

What does your friend mean by “AOL traces”? Does he mean the corporation, or the software?

It’s true that AOL (software) traces your favorites. It keeps a copy in your X:\America Online Y.0\organize\yourscreenname file (where X is your hard drive, Y your version of AOL, and yourscreenname is your screen name) and in some versions of AOL, it also keeps a copy in X:\America Online Y.0\backup\yourscreenname. That’s how your favorites show up every time you sign on, and how you can replace them if your AOL gets damaged.

I can’t prove that AOL the corporation doesn’t access your favorites list, but if they had a copy on their server, wouldn’t they want to make it accessible wherever you signed on, like your buddy list and address book (if using 6.0 or 7.0)?

If you don’t want that information to be available to them, then there’s a solution (usually used by people who don’t want their spouse or children to have access to their favorites); you can save your bookmarks in IE or Netscape, or you can click Favorites>My Favorite Places and back up your favorite places onto a disk, then remove the disk. Delete the favorite places in the software, then restore them each time you sign on and want access to your favorites, deleting them again before you sign off; or rename the saved file as something.pfc and simply use File>Open to open it in AOL as a read-only file with clickable links.

Corr

5

Does anyone really think they have any interest in tracing through the favorites of 34 million people? Do you have any idea what kind of man/machine time that would involve? Do you know how much storage space that would take? What would motivate them? What would they be hoping to find?