It looks like “Yahoo!” is engaging in some very scummy, even spyware-like behavior. The “auto update” feature in Yahoo! Messenger now automatically changes several settings in your IE browser. It even goes so far as to forcefully set your default browser to Internet Explorer.

Here is the article with the information, including screen shots.

Unrelated note: I found this article via the new website DoTheRightThing.com. It’s an interesting concept that’s similar to Digg, but you can rate companies / stories into the negatives if their behavior has a negative impact. See the Yahoo! Story for an example.