Last night I finally pulled the plug on our old AOL account. It had served us well for over twelve years, but it was time to part company. When we got DSL in our current house about six years ago we had scaled back to just the bare minimum AOL service, just in case of emergency or if we found ourselves in a hotel without Internet access. Now I’m not sure we even own a computer with a modem to even access the service, so it just didn’t make sense anymore. With Blackberries and smart phones, we can have access even when wifi isn’t available. I plan to take what we’re saving in monthly fees for AOL and use them for expanded web access plans on our phones.
To be honest, I had completely forgotten that we still had an AOL account. That’s how little I had paid attention to it. AOL certainly didn’t make it easy to find a way to cancel the service. With the dial-up interface no longer an option, and I had to go to their website and spend some time searching, but I finally found it. As I pulled the plug on the service last night, I began to reflect on my online history, not just with AOL, but with other service I have used.
