I installed the new Yahoo Messenger 6.0 instant messaging client, and even though I chose custom installation, and removed the optional components to prevent Yahoo from taking over my computer, it still hijacked my computer. How, you ask? I’m glad you asked; here are a list of things Yahoo Messenger 6.0 has done to my computer without my permission:
- Put “Email with Yahoo!” in the context menu (right click an icon to see it)
- Put links to Yahoo and Yahoo Mail in my Internet Explorer Favorites
- Put Launch.com in my Start Menu
- Put links in the My Photos, My Music, and My Videos folders in both my user account and shared files
- Installed external files, Yahoo Address Autocomplete, Yahoo Messenger Toolbar, and Yahoo Mail, all which I had to remove via Add/Remove Programs
Now if I were to contact a Yahoo representative and ask him why their program hijacks my computer without my consent, he would likely respond, “Yahoo Messenger 6.0 is a revolutionary product, and it is free. To keep it free, we have to bombard you with marketting. I’m sure you understand.”
No siree, I don’t understand, and I won’t understand. The reason? Trillian – offers a free IM client that does better than Yahoo Messenger, AIM, MSN Messenger, and ICQ all combined. No ads, no bloat, and supports everything all the other IM clients does, without hijacking my computer. Yahoo does this to outmanuever AOL and Microsoft. Don’t get caught up in their corporate tug of war and allow your computer to get hijacked.
The only reason why I installed Yahoo Messenger 6.0 was to use it’s webcam function, but since Trillian’s works just as well, I’ll just uninstall Yahoo Messenger 6.0, and I suggest you do the same and grab Trillian instead. You don’t have to thank me.
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IRC, too! Anyone using Win and not using Trillian is either not aware of the program, or insane. Might I add that Trillian Pro has awesome plugins including a newsreader, winamp song list, email interface, on and on and on. It’s truly a killer app and I adore it.
molly on Jul 17th, 2004
Yahoo as an organisation seem to have this attitude right through, I made the fatal mistake of registering with a Yahoo email group and ended up getting upwards of a 100 spam mails a day as a result. They suck big time.
horai on Jul 18th, 2004
I use an open-source alternative to Trillian, called Miranda-IM. Works like a charm and combines the likes of AOLIM, Yahoo, MSN, IRC and Jabber.
I highly recommend it. :) And, best of all, it’s free.
kartooner on Jul 18th, 2004
I’m also a fan of Trillian Pro and not a fan of the YIM stand-alone app, but I’ll say it anyway – thank-you! ;)
Phy on Jul 19th, 2004
Personally, I use Gaim (gaim.sourceforge.net). It connects to all the various services like Trillian does, but it also allows you to (A) give your buddy screen names “real” names, and (B) lets you group multiple screen names together as a single person.
I’d recommend it over Trillian any day.
Also, if you want to look into Gaim, I’d suggest also downloading the Guifications plug-in for it:
http://sourceforge.net/project.....e_id=98375
Ryan Parman on Jul 19th, 2004
For some reason the Yahoo! Address Autocomplete will not get uninstalled when I use the Control Panel->Add Remove Programs. Do you have any idea why?
How else do I go about removing this? I find it annoying, and I have a feeling quite a large number of annoying pop-ups while browsing are caused by this. I am unable to get rid of the Yahoo! Mail and the Yahoo! icons as well on my IE Toolbar Links.
Any answers / solutions would be most appreciated.
CP Krishnan
C.P.Krishnan on Aug 5th, 2004
Hey, Horai (7/18/04) – They are not sending you spam emails; you set up your email prefs to recieve individual emails. You have 3 choices to change that. 1, you can set your prefs to read the messages online. 2, you can set your prefs to send only “special messages.” 3, you can set your prefs to send only “Daily Digest” once each day. The other option is to go to your Yahoo account, click the link for “groups” or “my groups” and completely remove yourself from any and all groups. Again, it all comes back to you, because YOU set it up that way.
Jocks beware – Alpha Nerd has Spoken
Alpha Nerd on Aug 19th, 2004
there’s a fix for this. it’s pretty simple. run regedit.exe. go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers and delete the key “Yahoo! Mail”. enjoy ;)
Snake on Aug 25th, 2004
there’s a fix for this. it’s pretty simple. run regedit.exe. go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers and delete the key “Yahoo! Mail”. enjoy
Thank you this fix helped alot…saved me alot of time!!!
Jeff NYC on Sep 29th, 2004