Privacy
For privacy regulations, AIM has strict age restrictions. AIM accounts are available only for children over the age of 13; younger children are not permitted access to AIM.
Under the AIM Privacy Policy, AOL has no rights to read or monitor any private communications between users. The profile of the user has no privacy.
If public content is accessed it can be used for online, print or even broadcast advertising etc. This is outlined in the policy and terms of service, "you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium". This allows anything one posts to be used without a separate request for permission.
The issue of AIM's security has been called into question. AOL states that it has taken great steps to insure that personal information will not be accessed by unauthorized members, but that it cannot guarantee that that will not happen.
AIM is different from other clients such as Yahoo! Messenger in that it does not require approval from one buddy to be added to another's buddy list. As a result, it is possible for users to keep other unsuspecting users on their buddy list to see when they are online, read their status and away messages, and read their profiles. In fact, there is a web API to display one's status and away message as a widget on one's webpage. However, one can block another user from communicating and seeing one's status; but this does not prevent the user from creating a new account that is not blocked and therefore can still track the first user's status. A more complete privacy option is to select a menu option allowing communication only with those on one's buddy list; this causes blocking (thus appear offline to) all users who are not on one's buddy list.
AOL recently teamed up with Facebook, allowing you to login to AIM using your Facebook account. However, many privacy advocates claim that the convenience comes at a high price. In order to sign up for AIM Express, the more lightweight, web-based version, you must accept all of their account access stipulations. These include access to your photos, videos, messages in your inbox (including private), custom friends list, friend requests, and more. You must also allow AIM to access your account when you're offline, as well as post messages and videos on your wall. If you refuse to accept all the terms, the sign-up process stops.
The new release logs all conversations, and there is no opt-out.
Read more about this topic: AOL Instant Messenger
Famous quotes containing the word privacy:
“A new father quickly learns that his child invariably comes to the bathroom at precisely the times when he’s in there, as if he needed company. The only way for this father to be certain of bathroom privacy is to shave at the gas station.”
—Bill Cosby (20th century)
“Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. It is a more private and familiar, and at the same time, a more public and universal word, than is spoken in parlor or pulpit nowadays.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Isn’t privacy about keeping taboos in their place?”
—Kate Millet (b. 1934)