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AOL has a really neat concept for Windows users: AIM Sync.

The idea with AIM Sync is that you can get presence information in Outlook for people on your buddy list. However, there's something that's barely touched on that kind of bothers me. It's this paragraph in the description:

With AIM Sync, you can add Buddies from your Outlook Contacts to your AIM Buddy List feature with one click of your mouse. Instantaneously, AIM Sync will scan your Contact list and match up email addresses with AIM screen names in the AIM database. It will even let you list your instant buddies according to their screen names, mobile phone numbers or both.

I admit, I misread that. Because there was only one way I would have implemented this. As it turns out, AOL thought differently.

What I thought would happen, and what I still think should happen is that AIM Sync compares your Outlook contacts with your buddy list, and enables AIM presence and other capabilities for the people in your buddy list who are also in your Outlook contacts.

That's not what happened. Instead, AIM Sync compared my contact list to the main AIM database and poof! I now have about 300 AIM buddy names I didn't have before. None of the new people gave me their AIM names. But I have them anyway.

Again, I admit to seeing what I wanted to see instead of what really was in that description. Even with that, this creeps me out. I view AIM and other IM ids like a phone number. If you don't want me to have it, you should be able to do that. To not give me your AIM ID. You shouldn't have to go through hoops for this. This plugin means that you don't have a choice in this matter. If enough of your info makes it into my Outlook contacts, (Yes, yes, I know, I use Entourage, not Outlook. Well, Entourage syncs with Exchange, and since I support Outlook users, I also use Outlook 2003. Thanks to Entourage's Exchange support, if Entourage knows about you as a contact, so does Outlook), and you have an AIM buddy ID, I can have it too.

Some folks have multiple AIM names, and they use specific ones for groups of people. Well, guess what, all your AIM names are belong to me. Didnt' want me to know your AIM name, (and no, if you didn't, I'm not offended in the least, so don't worry about that. Not everyone needs or wants me to talk to them all the time. I'm not the center of everyone's universe.)? Too bad, I have it now.

I'm not accusing AOL of doing anything illegal here. I'll bet a dollar that they're well within their rights to do this. But...it feels wrong. In a creepy kind of way. Like someone found a diary with mildly personal info and published it. It's not damaging, but it bugs me. I still think AOL Sync is a good concept, but it should be a data vacuum from AOL to me. I'd much prefer if they rework it so that it only works with existing buddy list data. Don't add to my buddy list, just work with what's already there. Simple, and less creepy.

Oh yeah, and offering to spam everyone in my contacts list with “Hey, John noticed you don't have AIM, and that makes him sad. You should get AIM” emails? That's really lame guys, even for a company widely regarded as the land of the lame.

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