While I was away from my computer, someone decided that they needed to do some IM and installed Yahoo! Messenger. Okayyyyy …
Yahoo! Messenger comes with some extra junkware, namely Yahoo! Toolbar. What a piece of crap! I don’t need junkware on my computer so I shutdown FF, went to Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel, and much to my delight there was an entry to remove the toolbar. I hit remove and my web browsing was back to normal. Or so I thought.
No, Yahoo! Toolbar wasn’t removed. There it was, even after a reboot. Oh boy! And then I noticed that Yahoo! Messenger had already started running. What the hell? I do not want an IM client starting when I login. Goddam there is more Yahoo! mess to cleanup.
I figured out how to uninstall Yahoo! Toolbar. There is a nice menu item that asks for some feedback before removing the junkware from your computer. I entered some choice feedback and hoped for the best. After restarting FF, the toolbar looks to be gone. Yahoo.
However the Yahoo! Messenger is a much more insidious piece of work. Its from the generation of crapware that wont allow you to change any preferences without being logged in. Guess what? I don’t have a Yahoo! account. How the hell am I supposed to configure this thing?
Their ploy worked. I had to sign up for an account to change the preferences to stop it from running on startup. How annoying. All this to keep the damn thing installed so someone else can occasionally use the thing.
Yahoo is the new Bonzai Buddy!