Slashdot Mirror
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."
People really don't care about their products being "certified". Go out to the store and buy any usb wifi adapter you can find. In the installation guy it tells you to make sure that you hit "continue anyway" when your computer warns you the drivers aren't certified. I don't think not wanting to hit continue anyway is a valid reason for returning your new adapter.
We don't need administrative or legal solutions to this, though they're nice.
What we need is application sandboxing; that is, restrict an application's access to system resources when it runs (think chroot jails but on a much grander scale). The key to this (as with any security system) will be to balance security with usability, i.e. not make it so anal that you can't actually do anything. You'll still have ignorant users, but at least they will opt into insecurity rather than inherit it by default.
Crucially, this is something we nerds can do for ourselves and not rely on others whose agendas are opaque.
No you're not the only one. I posted a reply earlier this week that basically said the same thing. I think this must be one of ScuttleMonkey's buddies or something. I got modded down as offtopic, because for some reason everyone wants to look the other way.
This is obviously becoming a problem and represents what I consider to be a breach of ScuttleMonkey's journalistic integrity.
It's called Open Source. Or at least to me and the people I advise anyways.
I always tell people that Open Source apps typically do not have any of that crudware in them while most freeware does have that crap embedded, and then point them to various websites that track what freeware has what spy/crap/ad ware in it. I have never been burned by an OSS project and it's windows download/installer.
so look for the OSS label!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.