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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."
Yahoo is not the first to pull this stunt. At one time, Norton Internet Security (I think it was NIS2000, specifically) had known holes in the firewall component for different spyware applications. After enough people pitched a fit, they have since closed those holes (supposedly).
A love beyond compare...
No known commercial spyware for OS X or Linux
The next pasture is always greener
Just like you can't report Launch.com e-mail to your Yahoo! mail account as spam. Of course, Launch.com is actually part of Yahoo! now.
lexbaby
"Be Brave, Be Loyal, Be True." -- Hawkeye Pierce
This also bleeds into the issue that people have with EULAs: No one ever reads them.
The GAIN Trickler and other similar programs are very often installed legally and volutarily by users themselves. Oftentimes installing the software is predicated upon accepting these "malicious" programs. If a user has in fact agreed to install software, it may be (and yes, I'm playing the devil's advocate here) a perfectly logical step to avoid uninstalling it.
Imagine if the toolbar uninstalled program updates, patches, and other things automatically installed. We'd hate it. Of course, we're only complaining because it's not doing what we want; however, I don't think we should freak out at Yahoo. The program still operates within the scope of its definition.
It doesn't necessarily require an open source application to clean spyware off your computer. It just requires a company to produce software for the purpose of keeping your computer safe and running well, as opposed to creating it for the benefit of hidden advertising deals (I assume Claria gave them something for not removing their crap). The best way around this is to use multiple spyware scanning tools (Spybot + AdAware, for example). Claria probably won't make a deal with all the spyware remover companies.
Give me the patience that I need
h ttp://w ww3.yahoo.com/
To keep my piece of mind,
And with life's cares, I hope, Dear God,
Some happiness to find.
Let me google but for today,
Not worrying 'bout Ads ahead,
For I have trust that You will see
Gator and friends, all of them dead
Give me the courage to face the web's trials
And not from adware or spyware run,
Let me keep this thought in mind,
"My will, not Yahoo's, be done."
Oh I miss the yahoo I knew.
http://web.archive.org/web/19970201021647/
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
How exactly would having the source being readable change this situation. Claria/Gator is in the settings ready to be blocked... it just starts unblocked in the default setup.
I think this is just a side effect of Claria's lawsuits going after any body who calls them bad names such as "spyware". Yahoo's willing to block them, but they don't exactly want to take on this legal fight.
Maybe the best compromise is to leave everything unblocked by default... and then the start-up wizard can allow users to click on the blocks one-by-one with a nice easy "select all" available if they'd rather bypass that step. Something along the lines of "Submitted for your approval... these are the programs that in our opinion are worth blocking, do you agree?"
Yahoo's lawyers obviously do. The fact that the "Adware" category isn't set for removal by default is Yahoo's fuckup - the fact that Gator is in that category is probably a decision made by their lawyers.
What's far more insidious is likely to be all the bots/spyware/trojans that will, by next week, be disabling this portion of Yahoo's product the moment they find it just like viruses go after virus scanners and several trojans spyware programs go after Ad-Aware/Spybot/etc already.
This is not true. I personally managed to get adware on my system through bearshare before adware became as well known as it is. While you can only take my word for it, I do know very well what I'm doing with a computer, so it was not out of the type of ignorance you imply. I also just had the fun of cleaning up a ton of spyware a friend of mine got, who knows very well of adware and habitually clicks the 'no' button when it asks to install an ActiveX control, but accidently hit 'yes' once and found his system crawling with the crap.
These programs are trojans. While in some cases they make it 'known' what is being installed (as in, say, the adware version of DivX), they often are snuck in either through freeware or through ActiveX. While with email, you have to make at least a conscious effort to load that attachment, adware can hit even the best of us.