AOL forces friends on AIM customers

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Forced on AIM Customers?

The disturbing thing is not that they are forcing new friends on their customers, but alos their non-customers running non AIM s/w like GAIM. It portends bad techniques for the future since it is obvious they have control over the protocol.

Might as well start advertising via adding buddies. AOL could give the buddies names like "Drink Pepsi Cola" or "Ford Trucks Rock" AOL charges a modest fee of 1 cents per eyeball to the advertiser and guarentees 5 million eyes will see the ads disquised as buddys.

Also did anyone notice that even after they were removed, a reminder message popped up twice telling you they removed them? They could just skip the buddy install and pop up messages to ensure non-AIM users.

As far as the tales of people who were not affected; I find it hard to believe. Buddies are not stored on the client application (i.e. GAIM, AIM) but on AOL's servers so they have the ability to control the entire buddy list database.

Posted by: Mr. Big   Posted on: 11/19/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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