hi, 
What is the proper way to obtain the email password of AOL accounts of
a deceased person? Or is there any privacy law that prevents that? 
The person recently passed away but stored some valuable information
we need on the person's email file in AOL.  I can't seem to find a way
to contact AOL. (phone number) Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by scriptor-ga on 18 Aug 2003 10:43 PDT

Dear astrokoala,

I can provide you the current AOL customer support telephone numbers.
If someone can help you, it's the AOL staff - no one knows better
about their internal privacy rules than they do.
Of course, will ask lots of questions and demand both proof that the
AOL customer whose password you would like to get is really deceased,
and that you are legally entitled to read that person's e-mails. After
all, e-mails are just like written letters subject to privacy. That
means that you will most likely need to send them a certified copy of
the person's death certificate, some document that identifies you,
etc. All that, of course, provided that they generally hand over such
information about deceased customer's accounts.

Would you consider the AOL customer support phone numbers as a valid
answer?

Regards,
Scriptor

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Clarification of Question by astrokoala-ga on 18 Aug 2003 10:47 PDT

Yes, that'll be sufficient.  Thank you.

AOL BOO Hiss!

astrokoala...

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your situation, but when you said:
"The person recently passed away but stored some valuable information
 we need on the person's email file in AOL",
my impression is that your interest lies less in obtaining access to
recent emails (sent and received), which might be contained on the 
AOL servers, but in the contents of older emails which were opened,
read, and stored by the recipient.

If this is the case, there may still be a way for you to access these.
While one normally needs to read these stored emails using the AOL
program, I believe it is the case that these emails are stored in
sub-folders of the AOL program on the user's computer. While the
address book is stored on the AOL servers since AOL version 6, the
stored emails are, I believe, still kept on the user's computer.
I went through this process myself after I left AOL and wanted
access to some of my stored emails. 

I am not, at this point, intimately familiar with the folder structure
of the AOL program, but I remember that all the emails were kept in
one huge file, and, though it contains programming language (in order
to be read by the AOL program), it is possible to open this file
using a text editor which is capable of opening large files (Metapad:
http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/
is a good choice). You can use the 'find' feature of Metapad to locate
specific emails which you are seeking, if you know relevant keywords.
You may need to do a bit of editing to eliminate the programming 
language if your intention is to save the information in them, but all
the text of the original emails can be found, read, and edited.

I believe the email is stored under the 'organize' subfolder of 
the AOL directories, and can be found using Windows Explorer.
I will watch this page for your response, and if you need further
assistance with this, let me know.

sublime1-ga

Most browsers have some type of password manager. You can access the
preference folder on the person's account and you may find it there.If
you don't find a password for the specfic aol account, perhaps you'll
find that the person stored other passwords, and one of them may help.
Otherwise, you may find that if you go to the aol user login page, the
person may have the automatic log in feature turned on, and all you
have to do is accept the login. You won't be able to see the password
because it will be asterisk'd out, but at least you'll be able to get
in.

IN response to sublime's post, yes, if the person using the aol acct.
had chosen to save their e-mail then there may be a way of retrieving
it. In the AOL client, the place where e-mail is saved is called the
Personal Filing Cabinet, or "PFC".
The only way to view the contents of a PFC to my knowledge is by using
the AOL client it's self. This can be achieved by brining up the copy
of AOL that was used for the terminated/canceled acct (without trying
to sign on of course) and then going to the mail option in the upper
left hand corner. From there, look for "filing cabinet". As long as
the user did not have the PFC password protected, then everything
should be accessible.
If the copy of aol was removed (uninstalled) from the PC, then during
the uninstallation it should have dropped a copy of the PFC to the
desktop. Usually called "aol saved files" ect. Open that folder, look
for a folder called organize. In that folder there should be a folder
called cache and several files. All the files will start with a screen
name from the acct. and end with something like something like ".abi"
or ".arl", except for one, the file you need is the one that has the
screen name only. Highlight that file, right click and choose copy,
then paste to your desktop. On your desktop, right click on that file
and rename it. You can call it whatever you want, or leave it with the
same screen name, but the file must be renamed to end with ".pfc". So
if the file looked like this before (example)"chellphill", then
afterwards it should read "chellphill.pfc" or "test.pfc" ect... Once
you have done that, you must bring up AOL. This might be another
existing copy of AOL on the computer, or you may have to install a
fresh copy. When you finally have AOL up (do not sign on),
go to the upper left hand corner of the screen, and go to file, then
open, then change the look in field so that it reads "desktop" and
then look for the file you renamed to end with .pfc. Choose to open
that file, and it should bring up the PFC, which will contain any
saved bookmark, mail waiting to be sent, incoming/saved mail, mail
sent, and depending on what version the PFC was from, it also might
have the address book, and any saved signatures.