From PC World's Techlog:

Just a moment ago, I logged into iChat--the IM client I use when I use a Mac--and was startled to find buddies in my buddy list who...weren't my buddies. Their handles: Prof Gilzot, Sharethisdotcom, Spleak, and WSJ.


Well, what the heck, lemme add another mindless blog saying, "That happened to me too. No WAY!!!1!"

Odd. Here's the Techlog author's wrap up:

I'm wary about bashing AOL over this; AIM is their service and they can decide what they do with it, and as someone who usually uses it with third-party clients that don't show me AOL's ads, I'm pretty much a leeching freeloader. Also, once you've figured out what these bots are, it's easy enough to nuke 'em.


Okay, perhaps. But this still violates pretty clearly the conventions of using an IM client. I'm tired enough of people offering to be my friends over at myspace in junkmail (though, again, the rapper junk emails I've gotten are very well done overall), but I comfortably assume that if I was on myspace, these folk don't get added as friends automatically. Apparently AOL put these into some bot category on the official AIM client, which is a little better, but please, invite yourself in before assuming it's okay for AOLiza to be a regular.

Shouldn't Apple have given me a head's up, at least? Seriously, this is very un-Apple like user experience.

I'll save the fact that this pushes through the woman commodified to the woman commodity. Sure, we've all heard that one before -- prostitution, escort services, 976-LOVE numbers, trophy wives, etc -- but this has got to be the most widely experienced attempt to do it online (even pr0n hopefully not excepted), right?