#### "The Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

# The Answer Guy

#### By James T. Dennis, linux-questions-only@ssc.com
LinuxCare, http://www.linuxcare.com/

### AOL

From Ydoc10 on Mon, 17 May 1999

Is there any way to access AOL E-mail without knowing the password and being undetected?? As in showing mail read, etc.

Also...same question for AOL IM's....

Really need to know Thanks

> Not that I know of. In any event it sounds like such activities would be illegal and petty. In addition this question has nothing to do with Linux.

> So, where do you idiots get my address and why do you ask me these silly, irrelevant and juvenile questions?

> Actually you could "access" AOL E-mail by sniffing any network connection over which it was travelling. Of course you'd have get access to said network segment while the victim was access his or her e-mail.

> You could probably also get it from the victim's computer if you surrepticiously gained access to that (it probably appears in temporary files and possibly in removed/deleted file fragments.

> Naturally you could send the victim a hacked up "upgrade" to their AOL software and hope that he or she is stupid enough to install it.

> Then again you could walk into one of the AOL offices and try to gain direct access to their servers. That should be entertaining.

> If you actually try any of these moronic schemes I hope you get promptly arrested and suffer a humiliating time in the press.

##### Copyright © 1999, James T. Dennis
Published in The Linux Gazette Issue 42 June 1999

###### HTML transformation by Heather Stern of Starshine Techinical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

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