As you may have read before, I use AOL IM (AIM) to keep in contact with my kids online. Yesterday AIM was kind enough to automatically add two new “buddies” to my list. It informed me of this by interrupting me with an instant message:
“AIM added a new AIM Bots group to your Buddy List. AOL System Message: Send IMs to moviefone and shoppingbuddy for great holiday flicks and gift ideas. (To remove ‘em, just right-click and delete! Learn More)”
So not only does it pollute my contact list, but it interrupts my day and my train of thought on some client work with a stupid message telling me it has polluted my contact list. Argh! Not only did I get interrupted once, but then I get another couple of support calls from friends and family asking me if these new bots are safe (after years telling them not to load this kind of stuff) and how to get rid of them. Double Argh! If Microsoft did something like this the media would be all over them asking them to remove things customers did not ask for, but AOL gets a pass on this. Unbelieveable.
Never liked AOL. Not much of an IM user either, but when I was, I used Trillian. You may want to look into using that instead of AIM and see if this pollution stops. BTW, why doesn’t Firefox like blogger.com? Word verification doesn’t work.
Trillian did not stop this intrusion either in AIM. As for FireFox and the word verification, it works fine for me, I use FireFox 95% of the time (the only 5% I don’t use it is for Microsoft.com pages).
Why don’t you use Skype to IM with your children? I feel much more secure with Skype.
BTW, we just had a great Skype experience. We never seem to have very good luck calling home from Europe even with calling cards. We can’t seem to put in the right codes at the right time. Germany was the worse.
During our recent trip to France I took my headset along and we called home with Skype. In 7 days, I had one incident of a bad connection. When I hung up and called back, it was fine.
The best part is that I bought 10.00 euros the day we arrived and we called home every night to talk to Mickey, check the office voice mail and I called my mom once too. When we got back home, I had to go onsite for a week. I called home with Skype every night as well. None of the phone calls were short and one was close to an hour. I still have 6.26 euros in my account. Amazing! Inexpensive and easy to use. I like it.
My kids use AIM to communicate with their friends. We never have a busy phone at home. Remember how our parents yelled at us to get off the phone as teenagers. Does not exist today. AIM is their world, and I am trying to fit into it. {g}
My son just signed up with Skype, but for some reason it is not connecting at the University of Michigan. Not sure why yet, but he cannot even connect to a test call. Might be a block on the router, but that would be strange.