Both Yahoo and AOL have been criticized frequently in recent months for "invasive" and "coercive" user agreements and "spying on the users."

It also appears that the crudware people have noticed that they're a big enough target now to be worth bothering with. There have been numerous recent reports of worms crawling one or the other of them. Lots of recent crud using the "Instant Messaging" utilities of both services. It seems that people who use IM tend to keep large "buddy lists" that can be used by malware to self-propogate.

A complaint recently seen fairly often is the practice of both Yahoo and AOL of "force-loading" buddies you didn't know you wanted, since being on your "buddy list" gives their ads pretty free access to your message box.

A recent example of the crud, one of many and this one on AOL IM, is at AIM Worm Mimics Talking IM Bots, eWeek, By Ryan Naraine, December 7, 2005.

A worm that carries on a conversation with you... before it takes over your machine.

John