Phishing on AOL was closely associated with the warez community that exchanged pirated software. Those who would later phish on AOL during the 1990s originally used fake, algorithmically generated credit card numbers to create accounts on AOL, which could last weeks or possibly months. After AOL brought in measures in late 1995 to prevent this, early AOL crackers resorted to phishing for legitimate accounts.
A phisher might pose as an AOL staff member and send an instant message to a potential victim, asking him to reveal his password. In order to lure the victim into giving up sensitive information the message might include imperatives like “verify your account” or “confirm billing information”. Once the victim had revealed the password, the attacker could access and use the victim’s account for criminal purposes, such as spamming. Both phishing and warezing on AOL generally required custom-written programs, such as AOHell. Phishing became so prevalent on AOL that they added a line on all instant messages stating: “no one working at AOL will ask for your password or billing information”.
After 1997, AOL’s policy...
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