Digsby and Pidgin are two competing programs that perform pretty much the same task, consolidating your all your chat services into one program.  I've got accounts with Google, Yahoo, AIM, Facebook and MSN.  Until recently, I used Digsby to run all.   When I installed it, I had to click no to a 1/2 dozen or so "offers" to install other programs, but considered this to be a tolerable trade off for a functional program.   Turned out Digsby was doing something far more insidious.  Lifehacker reports:

1. USAGE OF COMPUTER RESOURCES. You agree to permit the Software to use the processing power of your computer when it is idle to run downloaded algorithms (mathematical equations) and code within a process. You understand that when the Software uses your computer, it likewise uses your CPU, bandwidth, and electrical power. The Software will use your computer to solve distributed computing problems, such as but not limited to, accelerating medical research projects, analyzing the stock market, searching the web, and finding the largest known prime number. This functionality is completely optional and you may disable it at any time.

Wow. Scary....

Custom Web Crawling – 80legs is using Plura to do distributed web crawling.  Rather than having data centers with very fat pipes, they use a portion of the bandwidth of the Plura nodes to crawl the web.  In order to improve the success ratio for each work unit, 80legs sends out Plura WUs with very few URLs to crawl.http://lifehacker.com/5336382/digsby-joins-the-dark-side-uses-your-pc-to-make-money

Turns out these guys can, and will, use your computer for activities quite unrelated to the function of the program, and without your knowledge. To make money that is not share with you.

Goodbye Digsby, hello Pidgin. http://www.pidgin.im/

And if you want Facebook caht, use this plugin: http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-facebookchat/