Would one have to sign on in Foley's screen name in order to get access to those that would have been on Foley's buddy list, or can the buddy list be seen without logging on?
http://www.tnl.net/who/bibliography/aimsecurity/
"AIM Still Not Secure
Tristan Louis > Bibliography > AIM Still Not Secure
Two months after a wave of remote break-ins plagued users of America Online's popular Instant Messenger service (AIM), security experts say AIM's central server is still not adequately protected from either client- or server-side hacks. Assuming they're right, the growing number of AIM business users could be opening their corporate communications to eavesdroppers on private conversations, even to sophisticated intruders who can impersonate other users.
For its part, AOL insists that the AIM clients have been recently patched. The company also maintains that the most frequent cause of client-side attacks -- namely, the buffer overflow exploit -- is no longer an issue, and that recent reports of server-side attacks are mainly "isolated, speculative, and anecdotal issues that we hear from time to time......."
Check google "spying AIM chat" all kinds of information as to what is possible.
In order for "Maf54" to show up on someone else's buddy list, both parties would need to be signed on to AOL (or AIM). Also, if you wanted to know if he was online you would add "Maf54" to your buddy list; you don't have to be on his buddy list. If a person selects the option to "block" others, then that person won't show up as logged on even when he is in fact logged on.