It's been a long time since I had a reason to use my Yahoo! account. The email service is poor compared to what either google, 1and1 or some hacking at my linode can provide, and appears to have an immense spam-count despite me never using it. As for the messenger service, well no-one on my buddylist seems to use yahoo any more, having abandoned it for the substandard* of Windows Live Messenger or having been seduced by skype.

As of today I'm deleting my yahoo account. It won't be missed.

As for communicating with my by IM, expect me to continue using the MSN/WindowsLive service until I no longer know anyone who uses it as their primary service. I will use ICQ/AIM/Oscar when I have the choice, and prefer to hand out my AIM handle because it's easier to remember.

And as for messenger clients I use pidgin and kopete depending on my mood and the system I'm on.

I advocate Off The Record as a transparent way of keeping private conversations private.

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* The standard of it comes with all computers is compelling, despite contradicting the well known fact that anything given away for free can't be worth using. At the end of the day if you can't beat them, just use your own multi-protocol client and an encryption plugin of your choice.