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AIM Bots: Useful or Spam?
An anonymous reader writes "Imagine my surprise this morning when AOL AIM popped up a window and introduced me to two bots that it automatically added to my buddy list. " Two seperate issues- one is simply auto adding robots to your friends list, which is very uncool. The second is a corporation using bots in an official capacity. This is an interesting trend, although technically speaking, not that far from the eggdrop of old.
And the first thing I did was delete them. I don't need some "shopping buddy" to automatically add themselves and promote buying over their network. Someone missed the ethics boat on this one.
I'm just surprised that AOL has taken this long to begin sending you advertisements via AIM. They have a near-monopoly on IM communications (near monopoly, I know that there are others out there, but everyone I know has an AIM name), and I'm hardly surprised that they have started to send people advertisements via IMs, since they put all of the resources and effort into maintaining the servers that people connnect to.
What is actually so unethical about adding 2 entries to your buddy list on a service they provide? I had no problem with it other than being mildly confused 2 seconds before I painfully deleted 2 WHOLE buddies from my list. Seems like such a mild issue to get so steamed up about.
Their servers, their rules.
That doesn't make their actions 'cool'.
That's where you failed it. It's *their* buddy list, and they're just letting you use it under the terms of the EULA.
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
The true question is: why did my IM client forgot to ask me about those new contacts? I would have denied those bots in the click of my mouse...
Because your client is intelligent in thinking that maybe you logon to aim from somewhere else (perhaps work?) and that you might have added people there. So, being the smart program that it is, since AOL says that these people are in your buddy list it adds them.
This is far more a problem of aol screwing around with people's buddy lists and adding a group and 2 buddys to everyone's list.
AOL is letting me use their servers to connect to others to chat with. I'm using their resource for free, so yeah, I think they get a little more leeway than a spammer. Spammers tend to only use others resources. Spammers don't usually host email servers for the public for free. Totally different situation.