Robert Lemos, News.com

The creator of an add-on program for AOL Time Warner's Instant Messenger plans to eradicate a component that phones home after critics called the feature "spyware."

The recent decision comes after some users of Big-O Software's AIM+ program--which adds chat logging, ad removal and other features to AIM--complained that the program violated their privacy by sending information about their online identity back to a Big-O server.

After listing several reasons that the feature had been included in the software, he concluded by saying, "As a final response to the concerns of AIM+ users, in the next version of AIM+, the statistic gathering code will be completely removed."

More of this article can be found at Yahoo/CNet News.