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Consumer Friendly Downloads?
* * Beatles-Beatles writes to tell us Yahoo and AOL will be offering a new anti-spyware initiative to begin next year. The new initiative will allow vendors to get their software "certified" as easy to remove and not containing spyware. From the article: "It creates market incentives that will change how consumers see software," said Doug Leeds, Yahoo's vice president for product justice. Backers of the initiative believe that consumers wouldn't benefit much from a system in which good products simply display seals of approval. "They are looking for us to do it for them," Leeds said."
This sort of sounds like a recycled verisign sig. Unfortunatyl i doubt it would mean much to anyone at first. The majority of uasy to remove and not containing spyware. From the article: "It creates market incentives that will change how consumers see software," said Doug Leeds, Yahoo's vice president for product justice. Backers of the initiative believe that consumers wouldn't benefit much from a system in which good products simply display seals of approval. "They are looking for us to do it for them," Leeds said."sers i encounter think you only get trojans from visitiing porn sites and spyware from the same.
Maybe this is a good thing. The interweb won't be the same.
Way back in March, Slashdot carried an article saying Office Depot will only carry Windows XP approved software.
Don't get me wrong, I think spyware is bad. I also think a big company only supporting a few software titles (and probably charging a bit to do it) is bad too.
I'd really prefer to see some kind of meta-moderated system by users to rate software as clear of spyware as it would give small vendors more of a chance. Otherwise, we will just further entrench big monopolies.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
... is only as strong as it weakest link.
It all boils down to:
- Do we trust AOL and Yahoo to be honest in this sort of thing.
- Do we trust that AOL and Yahoo have the technical capability to effectivelly detect both reported and not yet reported forms of spyware.
Sure, it is old hat, but one of these days, there might be a "(insert company name approved) software" program that actually holds its weight and is useful/consistent/trustworthy...
... perhaps AOL/Yahoo will do it better? ... of course, considering the advertising on Yahoo... I'm not going to count on it from them, but it might inspire a knock-off.
I'm not exactly saying infinite monkeys/infinite typewriters, here, I'm just saying we've only had one major company do this so far (as far as I know)
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
Let me guess... any vendor, no matter how small, will have to pay a shitload of money to get certified?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Let me get this straight. One company decides what is malware and what isn't. Ask yourself this, would Sony's rootkit have been considered a safe download? I think you'd find the answer is yes. This isn't an objective panel of experts deciding what is safe or what isn't, it's a company and this inherently flawed.
I find it hard to believe that any company, regardless of their otherwise good intentions, would refuse money from a company as Sony. In short, it may work in stoping the small spyware vendor but this is not nearly enough.
Simon.
... which comes with many software products in a bundle nowadays, and I'm pretty sure I don't want it.
I had the same thought at first, but the article states:
TRUSTe, an organization that already certifies and monitors Web site privacy and e-mail practices for businesses, will rely on testing by two outside labs for the vetting. It would not name the labs.
A user-run system of moderation is a great idea though. Although TRUSTe seems to be somewhat independant we have just recently seen that the big media corporations aren't exactly the most trustworthy entities when it comes to our personal privacy *cough...sony*, and there is sure to be alot of money at stake.
I'm not sure if this solves the problem. The problem is that there are a lot of not-so-professional people out there that just install anything they lay their hands on. It's like: "Hey! It's a PC! *Must* install stuff on this!" If the PC asks OK or Cancel? they click OK. And then to remove programs they're suddenly "smart" enough to find C:\Program Files\ and delete anything they don't understand. In the end all they need is a browser, an email client, an IM client, a Wordprocessor and perhaps something to mash up some Photo's. Installing anything more will just result in making it worse.
The problem isn't the software. It's the people using the software! As long as they don't know what they're doing there will always be others abusing this.
It will succeed because of one important thing; FEAR.
The recent mess with Sony's rootkit, security threats all over the place, and scares over the latest batch of nasty viruses have the average Joe-User terrified. Your average Techie like yourself and me know better and have enough smarts to keep safe, but Grandma sitting at her PC chatting in AIM will be scared out of her bloomers.
Its the reason why Antivirus companies are racking in the dough with virus definition update subscriptions and also why Adware recently nixed their free spyware scanner so you have to pay for it now. The only one that still free is Microsoft's beta program and a few smaller other scanners.
Fear of Spyware that compromises your computer and might let someone steal your identity online or infect you with a virus is what will drive the Average User (the majority of the Internet's population) to use these services. All of you fellow Slashdotters should have figured this out already...shame on you.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Windows programs generally have no dependancies, so a project like this is not really needed. It has been tried before, and there are various projects still taking a stab at this, but I don't think they'll get anywhere.
What do I as the user care if AOL "certifies" a programme is easy to install? If software followed the Windows XP guidelines (sufficient to qualify to show the logo), it would already be easy to install. Therefore, the good guys already have an incentive to seek certification - from Microsoft. They don't need AOL or Yahoo! to do the same. In fact, if AOL were that concerned about spyware they would have dumped the IE a long time ago since that is the primary vector for such things. Who knows, it might even lower their support calls having to deal with stupid users who've installed malware and are now complaining about all the porn popups they see online.
Do you use Firefox?
Tell me ONE (1) extension you have installed that does not say "UNSIGNED" in red black font?
Do you panick when you see those? do you avoid installing such extensions.
What is the meaning of that field anyway?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
It's what I do for a living Mr. Business Owner is fixing messes that you made... What really sucks for you is your MS Office and devices and specialized apps that you bought thinking you understood technology and your playing "IT Guy" when you actually make money doing something else. Holy crap I don't understand cheapskate small business owners. I am one too and if I need my business taxes done I pay somebody that knows what the hell they are doing. I've seen people spend several days monkeying around with comnputer problems cause they're too cheap to call me and in frustration they give in and I fix it in minutes. How much is their time worth? Apparently not much if they can afford to screw around for days playing "IT Guy". Me? I make a lot more money fixing things for people than I do trying to muddle through taxes or change the oil in my car, or whatever, so I pay the people that know what they're doing to perform those tasks.
Sorry to get off on a rant but you pretty much sound like a lot of my customer base. If y'all would stick to what it is that you make money at then you wouldn't be frustrated playing "IT Guy" and oh, NO you won't pay extra. You already admitted that you spend too much time playing "IT Guy". You should just pay and let someone who enjoys it handle it for you so you can focus on the core objective of your business.
How about "AOL will certify companies as prompt in stopping charging credit cards the moment service is cancelled.".
*cough* *choke* You'd ACTUALLY DO this? Even when I knew no better than to run Windows, I got ahold of the MS-port of Emacs, guaranteed to find all files hidden everywhichway on your system (and able to read binaries in hexl-mode as well; you can get an idea of what a program does this way). I always simply deleted the files/directories associated with the questionable programs. Each one uses a stinky trick to try to stop this, but don't worry: if their programmers were any good for a goddamn thing at all, they cold get jobs writing REAL programs! Ad/mal/spyware has about 6 tricks that it uses over and over; learn them all (after your sixth time being attacked), and you'll never have a problem dealing with them again. Emacs is also good for editing .ini and .bat files, for those nasty programs that write themselves into the system configuration.
Uninstaller, my ass! You know what an install program does? It copies files/directories to a destination folder and registers the process with Windows and tells it where the icon is so it can draw the little picture for the program for you in the Start menu's program files. What does an uninstaller do? Same thing in reverse, only it usually leaves behind a huge mess of folders and data cruft that you have to remove manually (for instance, did you once run and then uninstall the Sims? If so, you can reclaim 1 whole Gig of disk space just by deleting the leftover "Maxis" folder). Now, the whole process of harrassing you before "uninstalling" the program probably (a) records your data to ensure that you'll get plenty of spam in the future, and (b) might possibly just replace your malware with *more* malware that's harder to detect.
My number-one tipoff that a program was bad news on windows: (a) it was new and I didn't recognize it, and (b) the program's folder had no README.txt, uninstaller.exe, or any other courtesy conventions usually observed by professionals, and (c) tried to obfuscate it's purpose (never trust a program named .MQ345tyuII1Pzx334l?112.345, for instance). At the very least, I'd delete the executables (SHIFT-delete, no trash can!). What's the worst that could happen that way? I'd just have *broken* malware that didn't work anymore.
Your rant exemplifies why I would prefer doing it myself versus hiring someone. It's not being cheap that's the problem.