AOL Removes Spy Feature from Netscape

[Marjorie Simmons <lawyer () USIT NET>]

See "New Cases" at http://www.a-g-s.com/

An amended Class Action complaint was filed on August 3rd
against Netscape and America Online alleging violations of the
Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Computer Fraud
and Abuse Act. The complaint was filed in the United States
District Court for the Southern District of New York and amends
the original complaint, filed on June 30th. The Amended
Complaint charges Netscape and AOL with engaging in covert
surveillance of file transfers between Web sites and Internet
users. It alleges that, whenever a visitor to a Web site uses
Netscape's SmartDownload product to download a file,
SmartDownload secretly transmits to Netscape the file name and
location, along with an identification string unique to that
Internet user. AOL has said that it never used the data
generated by SmartDownload and that the purpose of the feature
was to back up the operation of the software itself which would
allow users to restart downloads that fail before completion.
Nonetheless, it announced in early August that the feature
would be removed.

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