Slashdot Mirror
AOL Changing IM Terms of Service
gpmac writes "AOL has responded to the recent slashdot attention. America Online Inc. plans to make three small but significant modifications to the terms of service for its AIM instant messaging product to head off a firestorm of privacy-related criticisms. The tweaks to the terms of service will be made in the section titled "Content You Post" and will explicitly exclude user-to-user chat sessions from the privacy rights an AIM user gives up to AOL."
They must have read my complaints in my away message.
and they fixed. Kudos to AOL for this one. Now, if only they could do more about the spammers on their network...
I've already stopped flirting with girls on IM. Although, I am working on a secret code. People that intercept my instant messages won't be able to understand a word I'm saying. I'll replace "you" with "u", "that's funny" with "lol", "skate" witk "sk8." Things like that. All in the name of privacy.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
"We're not making any policy changes. We're making some linguistic changes to clarify certain things and explain it a little better to our users," AOL spokesperson Andrew Weinstein told eWEEK.com.
Hmmm, is it just me or does this look like making things look better ? From my experience, lawyers usually pay a lot of attention on the things they write, and especially these kind of mistakes are the ones that plainly don't happen in published legal documents...
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
"We AIM to Please!"
From information gathered by reading your private messages, we've decided to retract former policies.
Not to quote the lion's share of the article here, but there are some things that need to be seen...
The tweaks to the terms of service will be made in the section titled "Content You Post" and will explicitly exclude user-to-user chat sessions from the privacy rights an AIM user gives up to AOL.
"We're not making any policy changes. We're making some linguistic changes to clarify certain things and explain it a little better to our users," AOL spokesperson Andrew Weinstein told eWEEK.com.
The modifications will use similar language from the AIM privacy policy to "make it clear that AOL does not read private user-to-user communications," Weinstein said.
[...]
More importantly, Weinstein said a blunt and inelegant line that reads "You waive any right to privacy" will be deleted altogether.
"That's a phrase that should not have been in that section in the first place. It clearly caused confusion, with good reason," Weinstein conceded.
[...]
Justin Uberti, chief architect for AIM, also joined the discussion, admitting the controversial section of the terms of service was "vague" and needed to be reworded.
Uberti explained on his Weblog that the amount of IM traffic on the AIM network "is on the order of hundreds of gigabytes a day."
"It would be very costly, and we have no desire to record all IM traffic. We don't do it," Uberti wrote.
For AIM users who remain distrustful, Uberti pointed out that the application offers Direct IM (aka Send IM Image) and Secure IM in all recent versions.
"In other words, you can send your IMs in such a way that they never go through our servers, and/or are encrypted with industry-standard SSL and S/MIME technology. I know this since I designed these features. There are no backdoors; I would not have permitted any," Uberti said.
They have already proved in court, many many times, that you have no expectation of privacy in such things as email and instant messaging. I'm not sure why were even discussing this.
Hopefully folks will appreciate the amount of sway that a good argument does have at AOL. If it wasn't for public discussion the TOS probably would not have been changed. But the public discussion happened and there will now be a more specific TOS statements. I wish folks would always give AOL a chance instead of immediately bashing. Was this enough to buy some good will from folks for the future?
...Juberti's blog (the chief architect for the AIM service):
AIM Privacy and Slashdot
OK, I am getting tired of hearing about how "The new AIM TOS allows AOL to have all rights to anything you say on IM, AOL reads/stores all your IMs, etc."
I take this kind of personally, because that is not something I would want to be associated with.
First off, that blurb in the TOS only refers to AIM forum posts, not IMs. I agree that it is vague and should be reworded to be clear.
Second, the amount of IM traffic is on the order of hundreds of gigabytes a day. It would be very costly, and we have no desire to record all IM traffic. We don't do it.
Thirdly, if you still don't trust us, we have Direct IM (aka Send IM Image) and Secure IM in all recent versions of the AIM software. In other words, you can send your IMs in such a way that they never go through our servers, and/or are encrypted with industry-standard SSL and S/MIME technology. I know this since I designed these features. There are no backdoors; I would not have permitted any.
I am saying this as a concerned invidual, and not as a corporate mouthpiece.
See Timmy, if they work really really hard, a few hundred thousand people really can make a difference.
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
"He who uses AOL for security deserves neither AOL nor security." - Benjamin Franklin
"AOL has responded to the recent slashdot attention."
where in the article did it say that slashdot was the motivating force? i read that it was just received a "firestorm of privacy-related criticism". please, this might be a popular site, but don't take credit where none is deserved. especially when the article never mentioned any group in particular. i am sure slashdot was one of MANY groups, organization, sites, etc. that complained. but in no did it change it's policy just because of slashdot...
Now we just need to get the RIAA to read a few articles.
Be sure to remember the Programmers Prayer
Ooh, hundreds of gigabytes a day, it would be very costly to record all that traffic. Gee, Dr. Evil, what does a 100 Gigabyte storage device cost? One Million Dollars?
> explicitly exclude user-to-user chat sessions from the privacy rights an AIM user gives up to AOL.
That's an improvement. But, wouldn't it be better (from a user rights and privacy perspective) to explicitly state the areas they DO take ownership of your data in, rather than only excluding this one area? The default case should be that they don't own your data. With excluding only AIM, they still leave the default case for all other services to be that AOL owns your data.
It's sort of like opt-in vs. opt-out. I prefer that anyone using my personal information or data be required to get my explicit permission to use it, rather than requiring me to contact each and ask them to not use it.
Last summer we reviewed using Yahoo's small business product to host our site, and handle our email, but their TOS had the same boilerplate in it. It required that anything we had on their system -- files, website, emails was available for them to resell or republish as their own content. Obvious non-starter, and our complaint about the issue was ignored so we didn't use the service.
America Online Inc. plans to make three small but significant modifications to the terms of service for its AIM instant messaging product to head off a firestorm of privacy-related criticisms.
In an earlier slashdot article (too lazy to get the link), it was mentioned that the terms of service was misinterpreted by someone, and that it was *never implied* that private IM conversations were to be snooped upon, saved, or so forth.
We never lost out privacy, some idiot just misread it and this most recent change is in an attempt to make it "idiot-proof" for the future.