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."
Why would I install a "toolbar" to clean out spyware? Shouldn't I use an application dedicated to that?
-Letter
Claria is one of the most prevalent and intrusive spyware programs out there. It's a major omission to not handle it.
This just shows yet another benefit of open source software. When a publicly traded corporation is solely behind the development of a closed product, don't be suprised when they try to protect their interests, at the consumer's expense.
The Technonaut
You mean that thing that was really cool back in 1995 but has become the net equivalent of a tourist trap?
I haven't even visited the site in years, literally. Do people still use that? Between the slanted stories on the front page and the increasing use of flash on the site, they drove me away a long time ago.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Wonder how much they charged for that little "Feature" to Claria and whomever. It would be very Microsoft of them.
Should we take this news as a shocker, or is it somehow expected in commercial sense? Yahoo can probably claim those businesses are not considered spyware from its point of view, hence no removal.
And how long? How long before we start seeing Anti-Spam filters have built-in mechanism to let associates' spam emails through, even if you blacklisted them.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I hope this doesn't surprise anyone. Seeing as how altruism is rarely profitable, this is exactly what I expected to hear sometime about an adware removal program.
Some antivirus or anti-spam software may not detect a virus/spam that its competitors do, but the next day the situation is reversed. Which one is better? Ditto anti-Spyware. Install the Yahoo toolbar if you think it will help. You should still use other tools though.
If the suspicions raised in the article are true however, I do think there is an ethical question here that should play some part in your decision.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
Gator/Claria is classified as 'adware' (as opposed to spyware) by the toolbar, and all adware by default is not blocked.
The toolbar will block them, it requires users clicking on a checkbox somewhere in the options. This makes it just a bit less sleazy.
The main problem with all of this is "where do you draw the line between spyware, adware, and software?"
Unlike viruses or worms, it's not at all clear where the line is between "good" and "bad." It may be that Claria has a valid business model, in which case they have a strong case that their software shouldn't be lumped in with the likes of clientman, or other truly nasty spyware. Certainly, their business model is not illegal today. (Of course, I personally don't like it, and would never use their software.)
Should Yahoo include "windows update" or "redhat update network" in their list of spyware?
These applications are out of control. To trick a user into installing (and sometimes, installing without asking) software that slows down the machine and floods them with pop up windows is worse then spam. At least with spam, you can delete it quickly.
In addition to this, I cannot count the number of times family members or neighbors have called me up asking for me to help them remove TONS of this junk from their machines. Its even worse when you have to update software just to remove the junk that has been installed. Some of these applications even force you to install other software to remove the offending software. This is ridiculous.
People trust Yahoo. For Yahoo to put a program out there on the market, and do this kind of thing on purpose? That is a pretty crappy thing for a company to do. I have lost what little respect I had for Yahoo..
Cyris
What goes around, comes around.
Yeah, they might not be playing fair in the spyware finding business, but at least they are still honest with the news reporting.
... but not entirely unexpected or illogical. They wish to protect their bottom line, after all, which is what all mega corporations are required to do to compete. Look at it from the point of view of the heartless corporation. ;-)
Of course it also means there's one more IE toolbar onto our 'banned' forever list. we used to allow the yahoo toolbar. >sigh
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
The Slashdot story is misleading though. It implies that a special case is made for these two companies, and that the tool ignores them. What is actually the case is that the two companies 'products' are in the adware category (along with others) which isn't enabled for filtering by default.
It's not quite the same as the system refusing to remove them, they're just in the category that isn't removed by default.
Cant we make anti-spyware apps that flood the spyware collection systems with LOADS of useless data?
Kinda makes spyware apps useless if they have to spend $$$ on extra bandwidth to handle the new data and $$$ on CPU Cycles to sort through the Krud.
hehe - and then watch as a new business of "anti-flood" filters are built for the spying companies!
Namely, "fun/amusement" applets -- think applets like "XEyes". Yes, I will admit, when I was in college I used to get a kick out of running things like "BartEyes" (A Bart Simpson knockoff of XEyes), and although I have outgrown them, My mom still likes her "Felix", a cat that walks around on her screen.
Felix is the last amusement applet I will ever let my mom run. I only let her run it now because it predates spyware being trojaned into these little applets. Today, I don't trust ANY fun/amusing "applet" because IMO they all potentially carry a spyware payload.
Sadly, I have noticed that this trend of spyware payloads has begun to move itself into mildly useful, free utitlity applets as well -- I have heard of a weather reporting applet and a time server synchronization applet carrying nasty payloads. I suppose it won't be much longer before the majority of nifty utilities from places like tucows.com are suspect.
I think sometimes that we live in sad times.
when i say, "NO DUH"??
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
slashdot is really really losing it. I've seen
more FUD this week than I've seen all last month,
maybe all year.
The tool does not favor "Yahoo's partners", as a
*30 second skim* of the f'in article tells you.
It simply doesn't scan adware by default. If
you click the box to scan adware, it does detect
Yahoo's partners products. The article isn't
clear on whether the product removes the adware.
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. I'm sure
I speak for all consumers here when I say, no
consumer, not a one, cares about the distinction.
(And the distinction is fuzzy at best anyway.)
Their product favors "adware", and some "adware"
producers are Yahoo partners. It's not as if,
like the slashdot article tries to imply, that
some adware is detected but not Yahoo's partners'.
It's like email viruses. You only get infected if you act like you don't care about getting infected. OR, if you act stupid. For about 4 years I have run Ad-Aware maybe a 4 times, and all I get as a result is few tracking cookies. And I Do use the internet more than average, I can tell you that. But then again, I am european ;)
:)
People get spy/ad-ware by doing stuff on the net. It's like walking in desert and finding oneself being thirsty but alas no water to drink.
Anti malware tools are like that water in the desert. Byt who the heck told you to go into that desert.
If you don't know what will happen from "yes", don't click on it. Preferably don't even click on "no". Kill the process
Off-topic? Goes with the motive, your honor...
(Nightshift and nothing to do, I admit)
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
And that makes it cool? Obviously the reason they are in that category (which itself isn't removed by default) has something to do with their financial ties to them. Same shit, just dressed up differently.
Really, this opens up a question of "Just what, exactly, is adware/spyware/malware?"
I remember a day when WeatherBug was a cool application being sponsored by local TV stations who basically used it to promote the WeatherNet equipment that they had invested in. No popups, just a few ads that mostly linked you to the TV station's website and sometimes had a picture of the station's weather team. Of course, now that thing is a pop-up crazy monster. But how can you say on which day was the day that this program suddenly turned "evil"... it's not exactly a binary state.
It's hard to ban software such as WhenU because the users end up agreeing somewhere along the line to a AUP/TOS/EULA that lays out exactly what WhenU is going to do. We need better standards for how such documents are displayed, but we can't exactly prevent people from agreeing to them if they really want to without taking out some programs that we like such as ad-blockers in the process.
Really, this is a game of blury definitions...
Wasnt it Yahoo that changed the "subscription" settings on all their current (at the time) email users to have them "opted-in" to all their spam partners not too long ago?
Fool me once...
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
blury definitions yes, but that does not mean that there are not clear distinctions.
We can all tell the difference between the salvation army and a pawn shop.
Now if an app has a thousand ads attached to it but it makes you well aware that exposure to these ads is the "price" you pay for using it and you choose to continue using it anyway, then thats not evil, it is just an annoyance, and one that you have chosen to accept at that. If it secretly slips ads in after it is suppossedly a terminated process or if takes any action that cannot easily be stopped or that you were not made clearly aware of, then it's evil and it clearly smells evil (insert your "hey that sounds like windows" joke here).
ôó
yahoo mail (you can actually get *gasp* POP3)
You can POP3 your Yahoo mail, but it requires paying $30/year. I want to do this, but am scared about the automatic renewal. There is no option to have it automatically stop at the expiration date. The consumer would not lose anything since the account would revert to the normal free webmail until another payment was received, and they could easily send reminders before and after the expiration.
I had Geocities and Yahoo mail. Geocities always allowed POP3. After Yahoo bought them, I merged the accounts and was able to POP3 from both accounts. Then Yahoo started charging. I received an email advertisement about the "new service" every time I tried to POP3.
I dislike that Yahoo's webmail does not work in Mozilla as well as MSIE. I wish they would hire some good standards-aware web developers. Their spam filter works very well, but did not work with POP3 the last time I used it. The spam would be in the Junk folder in webmail, but there was no option to exclude the Junk folder from POP3.
---
I use Yahoo's movie listings and their maps. Mapquest's maps do not appear in Mozilla (with my settings?), and Yahoo's maps do.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
I got sick of supporting my friend's dad's computer. No matter what I did to it, he still managed to fill it with viruses and spyware. It was insanity. I had things set to autoupdate signatures and automatically run, but to no avail.
So last week he said he wanted a new computer, gave me his credit card number, told me what apps he needed, and let me order him one. I got him a shiny new Apple. No more friggin' spyware and virus hell, no more support calls for when his browser keeps crashing, and the security on it is miles higher than what he had with WinME. Plus, if he needs support, he can just go down to the local Apple Genius Bar.
I'm sure plenty of malware for the Apple will come, it's just a matter of time. But for now, I don't have to deal with it, and the Apple actually suits his business much better than his old windows box did.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
It can amount to the same thing though. It's an old trick in ideology and politics (and I guess business as well) to redefine other groups in such ways as to suit your purposes. For example, what are you willing to bet that groups that are pro-US are not classified as "terrorist" even if they use similar tactics? This then means they are not subjected to the same legal restrictions that groups classified as terrorist are. Note also that while we call extreme Islamic groups 'terrorists' they also call the US 'terrorists' and themeselves as 'holy warriors'. The way you label your enemies and your friends is one way to serve your own interests while being to able to *deny* it. Other way these tricks are played are for example the definition of "poverty-stricken". For example in China recently, the rate of those in poverty suddenly rose over-night, literally, as before that, China had been defining "poverty" in such a way as to exclude people who were literally scraping a bare living so as to be able to reduce the official statistics of who was living in "poverty". They decided to redefine "poverty" because they figured the economy was good enough and the state was stable enough to afford it. Western governments also play tricks like this with the definition of "employment".
It seems to me that if they really wanted to do something about these companies they could start by not accounting for 31% of their profits.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
There is a substantial functional difference between not enabling adware filtering by default, and outright preventing adware filtering.
Both are lame, but at least the former gives a nod to the observant.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Oh, and about your sig;
What one GPL app is suing thousands of end users for sharing code? The whole point of the GPL is to give end users more rights then what copyright gives. Obviously you are just trolling and don't have a clue about the GPL. Please give one example of where a GPL app tried to remove right from and end-user? The RIAA is always tring to remove right from end-users.If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
I would like to add ease of uninstallation. If an app purposely makes it difficult to uninstall, then it's doubly evil.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
no.. maybe a smart move. They may not be ALLOWED to treat Claria (gator) as spyware (rememebr Claria's protest that they are not spyware). However, if you look carefully at the toolbar, it is easy to enable the removal of Claria too. its just disabled by default. The move to not remove claira may be more a legal position than a profit descision.
By then telling it on their OWN news story its liek saying.. yes its there, and making the world know that claira filtering is turned off by defult, so people turn it on! And what better way to "legally" say it, than in a news article quoting someone else!
Smart move i think!
Have a nice day!
Don't mislead here! Yahoo did NOT report on this story. Their news site only picked it up while aggregating news. eWEEK reported the story.
Hmmm... if you were writing crapware, would you target:
- 95% of desktop users
- 4% of desktop users
- 1% of desktop users
And, would it be more efficent to:
- Spend money on getting your crapware in more products
- Spend money on porting your crapware so you can reach the other 5%
Now, Windows has some fault (the "drive-by-download" flaw in IE, thankfully corrected in SP2), but the reason that Spyware is written for Windows is that it is the easiest way to reach the broadest audience.
Trust me, whether or not you have admin privelages, spyware can exist on the Mac.
IE happens to be particularly "extensible", making it easy to add toolbars and other crap. However, it's not exactly rocket science to display advertisements using Safari and a background process.
If it has to hide it's true function somewhere within 10 pages of legalese in the EULA, then it's triply evil. Drive-by downloads, on the other hand, particularily those that exploit bugs in IE should be considered viruses or malware by antivirus software.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
We get upset when hugely profitable companies steal stuff do other illegal stuff at the expense of worthy, under-paid programmers to make a profit on it.
We do not get upset when individuals ignore a corrupt law that tramples over fair-use rules in order to catch criminals that make NO monetary profit who are stealing from some of the most corrupt companies around.
The RIAA does not represent artists. It represents recording companies, producers etc. Have you SEEN their contracts? They continue to have clauses that state "The company shall only pay the artist based on 90% of sales, to account for an estimated 10% breakage." Yes, LP's had about 10% breakage. CD's have a breakage rate of less than 1% but the scum-bags still rip off the artists. And this is only ONE of severl ridiculous clausses of the standard contract.
The truth is that if P2P stopped entirely, I doubt the artists would get 10% more in sales. If the RIAA and their companies vanished today and the artists went to CD-BABY and similar services, the artists would end up making more money.
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