Andy Beal in a post titled “Exclusive – Yahoo Using Dirty Tactics to Switch Google & Firefox Users?” warns that accepting the update to Yahoo Messenger downloads IE7 and highjacks many of your browser’s preferences. What appears to be an “auto-update” for Yahoo Messenger may be more than it appears.
Though I haven’t experienced this personally, I consider practices like this to be at least misguided and at worse malicious. And I, for one, don’t want companies like Yahoo, or anyone else for that matter, making such choices for me. Be cautious if you decide to update Yahoo Messenger, or maybe this just might be a good time to consider changing to an alternate instant messaging client like Gaim. You will still be able to interact with your friends on Yahoo, but in addition you’ll be able to connect to AIM, Microsoft Messenger, Google Talk and many other instant messaging clients.
I saw this warning in this post today on Scoble’s blog.