The electronic squatting on AOL did not seem to last, at least not in its obvious form. On top of the usual hacker infighting, typified by The Future of Macfilez, AOL became serious about certain aspects of its system.

Chat room names which were frequently used by squatters - warez, filez, coldice, hackers and many others - were simply banned. Automated security robots, called the CATwatch, raided chat rooms and logged offending users off automatically.

Hacking AOL is still an ongoing activity, however. Web sites such as AOL Watch track what many consider to be lax security at the online service.

On September 6, 1998, users clicking AOL's "Find a chat" icon saw a list of chat rooms in which every room had exactly the same name. Two days later, hackers had hit AOL's NetNoir area - for the third time - and two weeks earlier, they attacked AOL's "Real Fans" area.

This marked the culmination of an ongoing streak in which at least 34 different AOL content areas were hacked since April of 1997. The hackers, and even some subscribers, publicly opined that AOL was powerless to prevent the assaults.