AOL outages and service status in Warrenton, Virginia

Problems in the last 24 hours in Warrenton, Virginia

The chart below shows the number of AOL reports we have received in the last 24 hours from users in Warrenton, Virginia and surrounding areas. An outage is declared when the number of reports exceeds the baseline, represented by the red line.

Community Discussion

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AOL Issues Reports

Latest outage, problems and issue reports in social media:

• 
  Virginia Ray (@VirginaRay57067) reported 5 minutes ago

  @thorMjolniro It turned out AOL never said that. MB checked it out. AND it turned out to be false. Because I do think she is stupid I believed it and did not check it with grok.

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  Thomas Olenik (@TomOlenik) reported 6 minutes ago

  @signorina37H 56k was blazing fast. I was an AOL customer beefier they went public with a 14.4k modem in a 486-66 machine and a whopping 8 MB RAM.

• 
  Daniil (@DaniilBuilds) reported 7 minutes ago

  AOL and Time Warner didn’t just pay for what the two companies were worth in January 2000. They paid for what they believed the two companies could become together. The announced merger was valued at roughly $350B, with AOL shareholders expected to own about 55% of the combined company. The logic was easy to understand: combine AOL’s internet business with Time Warner’s media assets and create value neither could generate alone. But there was a financial problem hiding inside that logic. Future synergies are uncertain. The merger closed in January 2001. SEC disclosures later put the acquisition cost at approximately $147B. Then came the accounting reckoning. In 2002, the combined company reported a $98.7B net loss, including a $54.2B goodwill impairment. That $54.2B was non-cash. It did not mean the company suddenly paid out $54.2B in cash. It meant the value previously assigned to acquired goodwill could no longer be supported at the same level. That distinction matters. When you pay upfront for future synergies, you are effectively putting a price on value that still depends on execution. If the synergies arrive, the premium can make sense. If they don’t, shareholders can end up carrying the cost. The most expensive synergy is the one you pay for before you prove it exists.

• 
  sprint (@sspriint) reported 8 minutes ago

  In June 2000 a room of shareholders raised their hands and approved the worst deal in corporate history. The price tag was $120,000,000,000. When the deal was announced five months earlier it was worth about $165,000,000,000. Nobody stopped the vote. The currency was melting while they counted the hands, and the vote went through anyway. AOL was the buyer. A dial-up company with 23,000,000 subscribers paying monthly for modem access. Time Warner was the target. Cable systems, film studios, magazines, record labels, actual assets producing actual cash. The internet company bought the media empire with stock. Paper bought property. Steve Case knew what his paper was worth. Gerald Levin took it anyway. Watch the men on the steps afterwards. Nobody is arguing. Nobody in that footage looks like they just lost anything. Two years later the combined company wrote down about $99,000,000,000 in a single year. That number is larger than the annual output of most countries. By 2009 the two halves were separated again, and the pieces were worth a fraction of what they carried in. Every analyst covering the deal called it visionary. The vote took minutes. The unwind took nine years.

• 
  Just a Bill (@wstcroix) reported 12 minutes ago

  @jwalkermobile Never had an AOL address, but all others, yep. Add took a typing class in high school…makes me real old. LOL

• 
  あほ (@Southgarbage) reported 13 minutes ago

  @alx Cuban is a TRAITOR... and an idiot ... AOL MY ***...

• 
  @KenAlex71 (@kenalex71) reported 18 minutes ago

  @Irina_exh 19. Never had an AOL account

• 
  The Smart Gremlin (@TheCultOfTwist) reported 19 minutes ago

  @VaultOfInsights Getting stalked and **** by total randos on AOL did require an account however... go figure.

• 
  KnightReads (@KDale53289) reported 21 minutes ago

  @Irina_exh 19. Never had an AOL address

• 
  Paul Walsh (@Paul__Walsh) reported 23 minutes ago

  People keep asking why Apple allowed OpenAI to build a ChatGPT integration for Messages. Do get to the point, I don’t think Apple anticipated a company using the permissions required by ChatGPT specifically to read, analyse and store people’s Messages when the Messages app includes iMessage and not just SMS. The entire point of iMessage is that it’s rich media *and* end to end encrypted. The permissions OpenAI needs exist for legitimate software, and Apple warns people before granting them. Backup software needs Full Disk Access to back up protected files. Security software needs it to inspect files for malicious activity. Disk utilities need it to search, recover and manage protected files. It’s similar to WebView. It gave developers a way to display parts of an app that could change without requiring a new app release and App Store review, such as terms of service, privacy policies and other remotely hosted content. In 2014, I predicted developers would eventually use WebView across every major app, with some apps built almost entirely inside it. I also warned this would create a security problem because WebView had no protection against dangerous links or malicious code typically found on webpages. Developers could make a WebView look identical to the native app, so people wouldn’t know whether they were using the app itself or interacting with a website. Today, in-app security is a multibillion dollar industry because it’s obvious that opening links inside an app might not be as safe as it should be. Most predictions, especially in the context of digital risk, are not believed by a lot of people. But they become obvious eventually. Today, I’m saying OpenAI’s ChatGPT integration with Apple Messages is more dangerous for some people than almost anything else on the market. Of course someone can take screenshots and send them to the FBI, repeat something they were told, or deliberately share a private conversation. That completely misses the point. None of those things is equivalent to giving an AI service automated access to read, analyse and store entire message histories involving everyone someone communicates with. Comparing deliberate human disclosure with automated access at scale ignores the capability that makes this fundamentally different. And why it removes the main benefit of end to end encryption. I can’t comprehend how security professionals can defend anything that undermines the purpose of end to end encryption by saying "but encryption isn’t broken". Protecting messages while they’re being transmitted means very little if an agent can systematically read, analyse and store them before they’re sent or after they’re received. Apple permissions have legitimate purposes. This particular use of them is the problem. During the early 2000s, I advocated for browser extensions. During the mid to late 2000s, before the first iPhone when mobile web didn't exist, I advocated for mobile web instead of WAP. In 2015, I advocated for chatbot integrations across messaging platforms and business tools. I’m a developer advocate, an open standards advocate, child safety advocate, and privacy advocate. I co-founded 2 W3C initiatives, including the Mobile Web Initiative, where I was tasked with rewriting Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of "One Web". And was a significant contributor to 8 technical specifications, including the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. I care about humanity. I don’t advocate for one thing in isolation from everything else. I’m a technical expert in specific areas with OSINT skills and 30 years across web, telecom, and mobile. 💡 I consider every stakeholder affected by open standards, technology, and legislation. Sometimes convenience justifies a privacy tradeoff. Sometimes privacy should take priority over security, and sometimes security should take priority over privacy. None of these should be treated as an absolute regardless of the consequences. In 2017, the PKI Consortium asked me to advise them privately and write about the impact DV SSL certificates and HTTPS Everywhere were having on anti phishing security. I faced fierce criticism from privacy advocates who argued that the connection should be encrypted even if the person on the other end was an impersonator. Those were their words. If you care, search for "Insecure Elephant in the Room". The fundamental reasons phishing works were the same when I was impersonated in 1996 when phishing was first discovered on the AOL network, the same when I wrote about it in 2017, and the same today. Now I have to argue with some security professionals defending something that undermines the purpose of end to end encryption. They need to look beyond the mechanics of software and encryption. Technology is an enabler. We need to consider human behaviour, how people will actually use a capability, and what happens when that behaviour occurs at scale. Also, the potential intent that goes beyond a website or privacy statement. I’ve faced this repeatedly over the years. Today, when I argue that government policies and age verification introduced in the name of online child safety and preventing child exploitation are actually surveillance measures, child safety advocates accuse me of not caring about children. This isn’t rocket science. Add AI to everything, even if you’re willing to accept the risks to yourself. But please don’t add AI in ways that undermine another person’s right to privacy or, depending on the context, their personal safety. Some people's lives depend on their ability to rely on end to end encryption. We're not talking about SMS. 💡Criticising the technology used to pursue an objective doesn’t mean opposing the objective.