[bbales]

I still keep aol for my daughters. Suddenly it is rejecting all passwords and won't let anyone sign on. I tried reinstalling, repairing permissions (didn't toss any preferences though), to no avail. And I just accidentally hung up after spending about 45 minutes on hold and am not eager to dgo through that again, at the moment.

Anyone else experiencing anything similar? We connect via our DSL account, not dial-up.

[Big Mac]

It sounds like the account was hacked into. The only way to get back in is to wait out that exhausting period on the phone to get customer service to reset the passwords. If you intend to keep the account, you should try to get a SecurID token. But IMO the best thing to do is to have your daughters migrate to regular email accounts and then cancel the service.

[bbales]

I'm not sure if it was hacked into. I finally made one of my kids wait on the phone and when I finally got through, it turned out they'd locked us all out b/c of "inappropriate material" posted on a teen message board. One kid was at work, the kid whose account it supposedly was was working on homework with a friend and the third kid doesn't know the others' passwords. It was inappropriate, too! So we're not sure what happened -- could have been my kids' friends, from when the child in question was at one of their houses. Or maybe it was hacked -- hadn't thought of that. They like AOL, unfortunately. I'd like to dump it.

It was SUCH a pain getting through, too -- though I like that they were proactive on the inappropriate material. But hey -- if all the passwords are reset, what the heck good is it to send me an e-mail?