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Yahoo Anti-Spy Favors Yahoo's Adware Partners?

Posted by simoniker on from the yodeling dept.

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."

6 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. This is not a first by KoriaDesevis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...
  2. Yahoo! Mail Spam Filter by lexbaby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    lexbaby
    "Be Brave, Be Loyal, Be True." -- Hawkeye Pierce
  3. Re:Only impacts Microsoft Windows users by karmatic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, I've come across 3 spyware XPIs so far. One of them simply downloaded their .exe, ran it, and installed their IE spyware on your system.

    The other 2 actually manipulated the Mozilla DOM, and as they were written in java, they can work just fine in OS X, or Linux.

  4. Re:This is a farce... by gcaseye6677 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:This is a farce... by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?"

  6. Actually that's probably a "COVER OUR ASSES"... by Moryath · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Remember how much Claria/Gator pitched a fit at sites on the 'net who were calling them spyware (YOU'RE SPYWARE SPYWARE SPYWARE GODDAMNIT YOU LOUSY LIARS - I've seen your trickler bullcrap and the javascript on webpages that slips the trickler into Windows, it's invasive spyware and that's final), going as far as to threaten legal action against a few?

    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.