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If you always wanted to be paranoid, but didn’t think you had a reason, here’s one:
I got an invitation from a friend to join Yahoo messenger. I installed the program, and as I registered, I entered Tapani V as my name. I didn’t feel it was necessary to enter my full name (Not that it is secret or anything, just uneccessary detail)
Yahoo messenger installed, to test it, I clicked on my friends name, and typed ‘hi’ in the box.
A Norton firewall alert popped up, informing me that my computer is trying to send information that I have marked ‘private’ to the internet. Details:
Sending to: filetransfer.msg.yahoo.com
Category: Name
Information blocked: Tapani V######I have not disclosed my full name to yahoo, so they have taken it from my computer. I have only two things I have classed as ‘private’ in my firewall settings: my name and my bankaccount number. If yahoo has harvested any other information from my computer, that would have happened without me being aware of it.
I’ve just tried the very same thing, I signed up for a new ID, I blocked my last name in my firewall same as you and didn’t give anything more than my last initial to Yahoo. I then signed into Y!M and sent a few IM’s. No warnings or notifications. Are you sure you didn’t give Yahoo your last name at some point?
I very much doubt that Yahoo Messenger would do this type of thing. Because if so, then it would happen to other users, and someone would have taken some form of action against Yahoo for invasion of privacy.
Yahoo would not specifically target one computer.
Scan your computer with programs such as Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D and run a full system scan with Norton. It could just be that you have some sort of program which sends information via Yahoo Messenger. I don’t think other users have anything to worry about.
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