Recently, I installed AOL (Mac OS X Version) onto my computer so that I could use internet at school while bypassing the school’s filter (I wasn’t doing anything dirty or hacking). To make a long story shot, the school improved the filter and connection.
I contacted AOL to do a manual uninstallation as I wanted no trace of the program. Technical support took me through the lenghty process of removing AOL, manually changing the permissisons on tons of files to be able to delete them. When all was done, and I was off the phone, I noticed that “AOL Dialup” was still on the Connect using menu of the Network System Preference panel.
Shocked, I logged in as root and searched the hard drive. I found one file remaining, “com.aol.net.ppp” was found in /System/Library/Extensions/
This file, when removed, made all PPP connections fail, from any provider. This is very troublesome. An error pops up from Internet Connect saying “An incorrect PPP option has been set. Please verify your settings and try again.” This error does not happen when the file is restored to its original location. Even with the file removed, “AOL Dialup” is still listed as a connection option.
AOL is currently facing many lawsuits from Windows users who report that previous versions of AOL are not removed completely. This appears to be the case with the Mac OS X version of AOL.
AOL’s Mac Development team must develop a solution that safely removes “com.aol.net.ppp” as well as all other AOL installed components. This must be made available in a way so that people that no longer use AOL can remove all traces of the program.
Mac OS X is an amazing operating system. It pains me to see developers like AOL abusing it. In addition, it would be nice to see a version of AOL that does not require root access (or changing of permissions manually) of files to remove the program manually.
Updating the AOL installer app is not enough! We want a manual solution.
