Intrusive Behavior in Software

A couple of days ago, I received some pushed upgrades here at work that caused a few things not to work, among them, Yahoo Instant Messenger.  I use Messenger a lot, not only to communicate with my children and husband during the day (they are home and there are the inevitable “Mom, have you seen my soccer cleats/socks/glasses/notebook/library book” questions on a near-daily basis), but to communicate directly with two developers and one trainer that are working on a project with me.  Having YIM fail to load is not acceptable, so I did the first thing that made sense:  downloaded and installed the upgrade to YIM.  So now it loads and logs in and works, albeit with a much bigger screen footprint than it had before (one of the reasons I’d not upgraded previously).

However, even though I un-clicked the check-box asking me if I wanted to install the Yahoo Toolbar and set Yahoo as my home page, I am getting daily reminders from Yahoo, every time I open Firefox, asking me if it can turn on Yahoo Toolbar and set Yahoo as my home page.  I checked installed programs, and removed the Yahoo toolbar that it installed without my permission, and when I got the popup box in Firefox asking me if I wanted to turn on the toolbar and reset the home page, I checked NO and also marked the box that says “don’t ask this again.”   Yet, this morning I booted up, logged in, and guess what?  Yup, the little box comes up asking me if I want to turn on the Yahoo toolbar and blah blah blah.  And this is in addition to the daily popup I get when opening Firefox asking me to “update extensions” and the only one on the list is the Yahoo Toolbar, even though I do not have it installed on this machine.

Then there’s the ongoing thing with iTunes.  Every time I turn it on, or just randomly when it is running, it asks me if I want to install Safari and the “Mobile” something-0r-other.  I always say no, but it just keeps asking me, over and over and over.

This type of pushy, intrusive behavior on the part of the software is just flat-out annoying.  No means no.  Once I say no, that should be it, and I should never be asked again.  I’m still looking for a fix for the Yahoo toolbar/Yahoo home page thing that has only been occurring since I upgraded YIM on Tuesday, and hopefully I’ll find one.  I don’t believe there is any kind of fix for the iTunes issue.  If anyone knows of a fix for either of these (and no, I’m not giving up YIM or Firefox, sorry), I’d love to hear about it.  Feel free to leave me a comment!