I suspect, but don't know, that someone has my AOL password and is
reading my emails via AOL Webmail. Knowing whether this is happening
or not is more important that changing my password to prevent it.

Is there anyway I can detect with certainty if this is happening?

hello oboschwar,
I have an AOL account myself, and I have just asked the AOL Tech
support guys about this, as well as some other related questions
around this subject, which i was curious about. When you log-into your
account (via dial-up), go to keyword: BILLING. There you can obtain a
list of your monthly bill in detail. You will see a list of which
screen names were used, date & time each time you connected and which
screen name you used. You will also see a breakdown of charges and
there will be a record of how long you spent in the AOL "Free Area"
(e.g. member services), and how long you you spent in a normal online
area. Now, if someone is getting access to your account via webmail,
you should see a record of when they logged in (date & time), and
under the screen name heading it will read <NetMail> . This should
therefore help you determine whether someone is gaining access to
account. You also have the option to print out this information.
Also, if the person accessing your account is also deleting your
emails, you could also check to see which emails were recently
deleted. You can therefore retrieve deleted emails that were deleted
in the last 24 hours, as they are still left on the server. So, if the
hacker has deleted any of your emails, then he/she may have left their
trace.
If you wish to report this to AOL, you shoud go to Keyword: NOTIFY
AOL.
 
I hope this information has been useful. Please let me know if you
need further clarification, before rating answer.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by roboschwar-ga on 16 Feb 2003 11:41 PST

Excellent answer.  Thank you Jack.  One last clarification if I might.
 When, and if, I see the post <netmail> will it identify who, or
where, the netmail was accessed from.

Thanks in advance, Rob Schwartz

---

Clarification of Answer by jackburton-ga on 16 Feb 2003 14:44 PST

rob....from what i have learned (and tested), one can only determine
the DATE and the TIME when that person has used AOL's webmail service
to log-in into the AOL account. So, you can actually find out when
someone has accessed your account, but <netmail> is the only
description given in the monthly billing regarding their identity -
there is no additional information given. Therefore, you cannot tell
which screen name was used to access your account, but you can
determine WHEN they logged-in to AOL webmail. If you keep a record of
the time(s) you logged in to your account, and then compare it to
time(s) that appear alongside <netmail>, then you should be able to
establlish whether one is hacking into your account. If you were to
report this AOL, they may be able to do something more. I hope that
helps.

Back in the days that I used AOL (4-5 years ago), I recall that
logging into AOL webmail would show up on a list of login times that
AOL kept.  This list showed when each screenname logged in, and all
screen names under the master account would be reflected on this list.
 To access it, I was able to go under the master account and go to
keyword Billing.  Since the newest version of AOL (8.0) is very
different from the one I used, I wouldn't be able to provide
instructions on how to access the list (or even whether or not it
still exists), but I hope this information assists you or another
researcher in answering this question.