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Yahoo Anti-Spy Favors Yahoo's Adware Partners?
prostoalex writes "Yahoo's new browser toolbar is advertised to clean out adware and spyware from the user's PC and from the sound of it is a good tool to rely on. Not so, says eWeek, whose Matt Hicks notices that Yahoo excludes by default two popular adware/spyware applications - Claria (ex-Gator) and WhenU.com - Claria has commercial bonding with Yahoo! Inc."
There'a always a catch, I think this might be true with AOL's spy blocking software too. After all they are "corporations" with an obligation to their shareholders. Advertizing makes a chunk of their revenues, and they aren't going to choke that golden goose, are they? For now I am sticking with Adaware.
Activists United
The site is still a great resource, but I haven't used it as a search engine in god knows how long.
Their news section is fantastic (although Google's is admittedly better), their webmail is the best I've ever used, and they have a great movie section that shows reviews, showtimes, etc.
Sucks as a search engine, but it's actually a pretty good "portal".
Ook, let's hold on a minute...AND RTFA (Again)! Yahoo's toolbar uses PestPatrol for its' spyware application, and even the article states that "On its Web site, PestPatrol does categorize software from Claria as adware." But later states that - "In a test of PestPatrol's free, online scanning tool, eWEEK.com confirmed that it does detect the presence of Claria's GAIN software automatically." Hmph, I says...I don't think (I dunno, maybe I'm not into the /. conspiracy theory mentality yet ;) ) Yahoo! is behind this, it smells like an issue with the PestPatrol software....But who knows?
Not everyone is out to get us, people....
My MythTV HowTo
The first (and only) time I used this product to scan for xx-ware it found Claria and removed it.
What I am I doing right/wrong?
[Yahoo's] webmail is the best I've ever used...
Damn, that's pathetic. Unless you like the flashing Horoscope buttons every time you look at your email...
You should check out a serious webmail provider, such as Fastmail.FM. I have been a happy customer for over two years. Tons of features and absolutely nothing on the page that doesn't have to do with your ability to gain information about and control your email.
I haven't even visited the site in years, literally. Do people still use that?
In a word, yes. Yahoo is still one of the most popular sites on the Internet, even if you don't think so.
--- There isn't any problem that can't be solved by a small, low yield nuclear device, is there??
AllAdvantage.com was one of those late-90s .com's with an incredible business plan that turned out to in fact not be credible enough to last. For those who never heard of it, it was the idea that users would run a "toolbar" on the bottom of their screen at all times, and then the company would send the users a monthly check for their cut of the ad revenue for the ads they were exposed to.
Sure, this was adware to the nth degree... but all of the users either knew or should have known what they were getting themselves into and they were on the financial take for their part in the scheme.
Of course, the major anti-malware products weren't around back then to weigh in on their opinions on these things. But, it's an interesting call. Nobody was ever tricked into installing this program, so would it be the duty of an anti-malware program to attack such a program, or just let it be?
http://www.safer-networking.org/
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The controversial part, read carefully now, is
that it detects *spyware* by default. It's
*adware* that isn't detected by default. They
shouldn't do one and not the other.
No, the controversial part is that some code which is clearly spyware is labelled adware, which is then not detected by default.
The code in question is Gator, which is definitely spyware (It's about the most famous spyware out there!) and GAIN. GAIN is arguably adware, but according to the article it's classified as spyware by PestPatrol, the people who make the engine for the Yahoo toolbar. This suggests that Yahoo changed it to adware.
Putting your business partners' code into the "not cleaned by default" section when it shouldn't be certainly does qualify as favoring those partners!
This is wrong, NIS did not make holes in the firewall for spyware. NIS had a method for applying preset rules to known programs so they would work without the user needing to be an expert. You and I might know that a web browser needs to access outbound on port 80, as well as FTP rules, but Joe User doesn't.
.EXE name to apply the rule, and it was quickly discovered that you could rename a malicious program to use the same name of a known good program and take advantage of those rules. This was quickly fixed by adding a digital signature database that tracked each known good EXE (each version released wherever possible) so that only the real programs could take advantage of this functionality.
This is a great way to make a firewall usable for novices, but it had a flaw. It used the
A couple of people saw the preset rules when NIS was originally released and made the assumption that since they listed a bunch of programs, there must be spyware in there. This was not true, and the NIS team watched those new rules like a hawk to make sure that no bad guys got in.
How do I know this? Because I worked on NIS 2000 2.0 and had the privilege of leading the NIS 2001 through NIS 2004 quality assurance team.
FUD is not something that Microsoft has a monopoly on, as the parent post proves, well meaning but wrong end users can dish it out too.
I think google nicely sums up what malware really is
In its spyware-fighting tool released in beta last week, Yahoo Inc. left out for automatic detection a category of often-unwanted software for which its paid search division has a financial stake. Yahoo's Anti-Spy beta for its browser toolbar doesn't include adware by default when it scans users' systems for unwanted programs.
[ ... ]
Among the programs the Sunnyvale, Calif., company classifies as adware are controversial ones from Claria Corp. (formerly The Gator Corp.) and WhenU.com Inc., two common targets of spyware critics who say the companies trick users into accepting unwanted downloads and flood machines with pop-up ads.
With Claria, best known for its Gator eWallet application, Yahoo is also a business partner. Claria, based in Redwood City, Calif., delivers pop-up and other forms of advertising from its GAIN ad network through software downloaded onto users' machines.
Here is a screenshot that shows how simple it is to remove adware using the tool.
Yahoo Anti-Spy
The article makes it sound like you have to go clicking through a bunch of option screens, but the truth is that removing adware is exactly one click more complex that simply running the program.
You guys are so ready to excoriate Yahoo, but all they've done is provide a free, easy-to-use tool for common users to delete crap from their computers. So what if they rely on the user to click *one cleary labeled check box* to delete software created by Yahoo's own business partners?
Keep in mind that the program has no negative side effects...even according to the progam's critics, its worst sin is a sin of omission.
If you check the "also check adware" button, it will remove Claria. I've done this.
It doesn't remove any kind of adware by default, Claria or no.
Ben
Blech - I misspoke (way too tired - stupid 32 hour coding sessions).
Anyhow, Mozilla uses XUL, which is syntactally similar to Java. XUL, by design, allows manipulation of the Document Object Model (DOM) of the browser, which is what allows form filling, ad blocking, etc.
Anyhow, the 2 non-IE spyware work by basically shoving an evil JavaScript (probably where I got java from) script into every html page that is loaded. As I didn't actually _run_ them, I have no clue what the javascript does.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Man, you have no clue about the GPL do you? You can modify GPL code as much as you want. A corporation (end-user) can even modify GPL code for their own needs and never release those changes as long as they don't try to distribute those changes. So the fortune 500 that I am a senior programmer for can take any GPL app and use it internally and make any amount of changes we want without releasing those changes. You can take a GPL app and modify it as you please and keep it "top secreat". If you want to distribute those changes, the GPL states that you must also distrubute the code. If you don't distribute, those code changes belong to you only. Get a clue about the GPL before you try to put it down.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
the thing is, even "legitimate" programs like AOL IM are loading us up with this crap... We can simply never install any new programs out of fear of getting infected, or we can just run spyware cleaning apps on occasion and enjoy all the wonders of sub-par chatting applications.
It's $19.99 per year. They send you at least one notice: [This is a notice to remind you that your Yahoo! POP Access and Forwarding service will automatically renew on 22-APR-03, and your Yahoo! Wallet will be charged the annual service fee of $19.99 on that date. This is 20% off the current regular price.] before doing so.
That said, I'm getting impatient with it, the spam filtering is not very good, misses a lot and has false positives. For the same price I could get my own domain and look after my pown email; just inertis stops me so far.
but there was no option to exclude the Junk folder from POP3.
Yes there is.
Mail Options ->POP Access & Forwarding -> uncheck "Include Bulk Mail folder when downloading new messages"
Maybe you should look at YPOPs, "This application emulates a POP3 server and enables popular email clients like Outlook, Netscape, Eudora, Mozilla, etc., to download email from Yahoo!" When I get somethng better I'll use something like this to keep an eye on my Yahoo account.
This is typical yahoo!. I have a love hate relationship with yahho! since they have quite a few good, free, services. Things like free fantasy sports, of which just about any other system with that much organization has gone pay in some way. (Yahoo does have pay for extra functionality.. but if you have some whits about you and like looking at stats and figure out some points on your own .. you don't need it.) Also Free e-mail, of which i like using.
.. it tells you where to go once you've actually started geting this spam.
.. So i open it, and low and behold i see some relation to yahoo. I'm pissed now. I mean this is spam .. and they say the block spam or at least put it into a BULK folder for if you wanna view it you can .. or you can just empty. So i say to myself, "I'm gonna show you, I'll mark this as spam". To my suprise and very much anger the message WAS FREAKING SET IN SUCH A WAY that the spam blocker said the message was innelligable to be blocked!!!!
.. i found about as many ad director e-mail addresses, VP's addresses, and a couple of other higher Uppermanagement e-mail addresses i could find. I put them all in the to: block of an e-mail forward with a Screenshot of the unblockable and forward of the message and wrote a concise but very vehement message to them all about how i thought their company was being hypocritcal with such actions.
.. and i won't bitch anymore. 2. other people bitched like i did, and they stopped that stupid shit.
Now with that said the reason it doesn't suprise me is cause of an incident i had with Yahoo! mail's spam blocker quite a few months ago.
1. They have by default in a setting list thats not really related to your e-mail account a list of ON BY DEFAULT e-mail ad lists that you get put on. In their defense
2. This is the Kicker. I started getting some other e-mails from Yahoo.com affiliates and themselves. I was kinda suprised it didnt come up in spam bin, cause it wasn't really obvious it was from yahoo. I was confused
After this incident i rooted around on yahoo's website
So since then.. i've never gotten anything from yahoo like that... either 1. they put me on a special list so i don't get it
Who makes you Sig?
delete
n uArguments.open(sRedir, "_search");
c:\windows\web\related.htm
or better yet...
open the htm in notepad and change the url from the msn click track redirect (takes you to alexa )to googles related feature
http://www.google.com/search?q=related: www.slashdot.org
or stick this in that related.htm file
<script>
var sUrl = external.menuArguments.location.href;
var sRedir = "http://www.google.com/search?q=related:";
if (sUrl.indexOf("http://") != 0)
{
sRedir+="secure or offline site";
} else {
sRedir+=encodeURIComponent(sUrl);
}
external.me
</script>
no MSN or Alexa privacy breaches involved
enjoy
Is there any good reason to use POP3 over IMAP, aside from some services not offering IMAP access?
POP3 allows downloading your inbound mail to a local client. The only choice is whether to delete the mail from the server at the time of the download or let it remain on the server (useful when using a temporary client.)
IMAP replicates your entire mail file (email and folders) to clients. You use more space on the server and all clients, but your mail looks the same on all PCs.
If you only use one PC, then POP3 is fine. If you use one PC as the master, and occasionally want to check your mail from other PCs, then POP3 is fine. If you are putting your mail into another system that allows mail replication, then POP3 is good because it empties the other servers.
If you use multiple clients and want to maintain your folders, then either use that last option, or use IMAP.
---
I have mail pulled from several sources into my Lotus Notes mail file, which is then replicated between my home systems and several internet servers for redundant access from anywhere, including webmail. I use POP3 to pull the mail from all other systems. My mail database sorts it into folders depending on where it originated.
IMAP was designed to grant Notes-like abilities to email. If you want a distributed system and do not have Notes, then IMAP is a good alternative, as long as your mail servers support it. (Lotus Notes servers support webmail, POP3, IMAP, and Notes replication, so you can use your Notes infrastructure with every standards-based mail client.)
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
This isn't so much a new thing. SRC Technologies in Hilliard, OH makes a spyware remover called SpyBouncer that checks for adware and malicious spyware. The same parent company also sells KeyLogger, a program that does just that-- it logs all keystrokes (including passwords, SSNs, credit card numbers, your pr0n searches, etc.) into a hidden file for retreval later. I sent a message to the SpyBouncer tech support group asking if it will remove KeyLogger. No response. One could take that to mean "No". Kinda like the fire department selling white phosphorus grenades to children, IMHO.
This sig is exempt from disclosure under the privacy Act of 1974.