A few years ago, TWAOL (Time Warner-AOL) purchased a company called Mirabilis. Mirabilis had pioneered a product called ICQ which was a powerful, feature rich, instant messaging program. When AOL took it over, my first thoughts were "Uh Oh".

Sure enough, easy advertisements starting popping up all over the place, and they littered the interface with "easy just got even easier"-type buttons. When I went to install this latest version of easy ICQ, I was dismayed to discover that AOL was hijacking my contact list. Now all of my contacts are stored in their easy database, probably to be used for marketing analysis.

In addition to this, their easy software has invaded every nook and cranny of my PC and every software application that I have. I didn't ask it to do any of this, nor was I offered a custom installation opportunity to opt in or out of it. First there were the eighteen easy new icons they placed on my desktop, most of which were trying to compel me to sign up for AOL. These easy free offers and advertisements also found their way into my start menu, program menu, "Quick Launch" menu, system tray, favorites list, links list, and signatures for both Outlook and Outlook Express. My tools menu, and search utility have also been hijacked.

Every program I open now has a toolbar for easy ICQ and asks me to sign up for easy AOL. I managed to remove it from Internet Exploiter, I mean Explorer, and it managed to come back as if to say "Why did you do that Dave?" and "Why haven't you signed up for AOL?"

They also tried changing my homepage to AOL.COM, and my bank recently notified me that AOL had attempted to convert my checking account over to AOL EZ-bank 5.0, another AOL subsidiary. Sure, AOL may be "easier than easy" if you simply allow them to control every aspect of your life, but undoing the damage caused by installing their software has proved to be very very difficult.