Slashdot Mirror
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?
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
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.
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
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?