Fate X

Fate X was a "proggie" or "ware" (singular of "warez") used to wreak various forms of havoc on older versions of AOL. It was present on the scene at least by the late 1990s, with versions 2.5 and 3.0 being quite popular.

Developed by MaGuS & FuNGii

Features of Fate X
Punter: Also known as an Instant Message (IM) bomber, the punter would allow a person to select the AOL user that they wanted to "punt" offline and use IMs to attack. Once the user to be punted was selected, the Fate X user would activate the punter and the program would send numerous IMs to the user to be punted at a very fast rate. This would be coupled to known HTML codes in the IM messages which would freeze the attacked person's computer or cause an AOL error, forcing the attacked user to log off AOL.

Pinter: This program did the same thing as the punter, but used chat invitations.

Room Buster: This would allow the Fate X user to attempt to enter full chat rooms over and over again at a very rapid rate. By using the program, the Fate X user had the advantage of automated attempts to enter a full chat room which could not be rivaled by a user attempting to enter the chat room manually.

Scroller: This would allow the Fate X user to scroll pictures and sayings in a chat room for others to see. Often, this would disrupt the normal flow of conversation in the chat room.

Email Bomber: This would allow a Fate X user to flood the email box of another user with hundreds of emails all saying the same thing.

Mass Mailer: This would allow the Fate X user to go into a chat room and offer to give programs, music, pictures and movies to other users at a rapid rate. Most commonly used in private chat rooms such as MM or Warez or Zeraw, a Fate X user would turn on the mass mailer which would say something in the chat room such as "To get on the list, type MM." When users in the room typed MM into the chat room dialogue, the Fate X program would record their screen name in a mass mailer list. Once the Fate X user decided the list was long enough, they would stop the listing part and use the Fate X mass mailer to send out the multimedia to the various users on the list that was compiled from the chat room.

Bots: These were parts of the Fate X program which would do automated functions for the Fate X user. Functions could really be anything, but common bots included joke telling bots, stay online bots and trivia bots.

Downfall of Warez and Progs on AOL
Around the time that AOL 4.0 was released, the AOL began to take a number of security measures to stop the spread of these programs and of pirated multimedia in general. AOL 4.0 prevented numerous AOL add-on programs such as Fate X from working. Especially crucial was that users of AOL 4.0 were no longer succeptible to Punter, Pinter or email bombing attacks. Additionally, AOL began using bots of their own. Their bot, known as CATWatch01, would sit in known Warez/Piracy rooms and would record all the users who entered the rooms. Shortly after, the users would be logged off and would receive a warning that they were seen in an illegal chat room, in violation of the AOL Terms of Service and that additional warnings would result in termination of services. Repeat offenders had their accounts terminated.

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