what…WEATHERBUG!?

I apologize for my lack of updates lately. I’ve been slammed at work and at home. More work, more birthdays (my dads this time) and then more work again. Today Amy loaded AOL Instant Messenger on my primary PC at home so that she could chat with Katie. Innocent enough. But then to my shock, horror and embarrassment I found Weatherbug on my Start Menu tonight. I’m not sure what saved me from the stroke. Devinne intervention?

Ad-Aware to the rescue – save me now. Sure ‘nuf, 13 data miners were found, quarantined and deleted. Whoa. I still feel violated. The machine seems healthy. Amy didn’t know any better. And like most people she doesn’t understand my concern. So for those who can’t see the “big deal” – Weatherbug is spyware. It loads cookies (files) on your PC to track where you go o the Internet. And AOL is happy to load it for you with Instant Messenger unless you specifically say no. To explain how robust and efficient it is I’ll let the fact that it made 76 connections to 13 sites for traffic reporting in the 9 hours it was on my PC stand as testament. And now I’ve done my “end user support” duties for the evening.

In my world AOL stands for All Outta Luck. Stay away from it at all costs. If you must use IM software, please use Yahoo Messenger. Your PC will thank you. Just for the record, I let Amy keep AOL IM installed. I cleaned off the rest of the garbage it came with.