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Ask Toolbar Now Considered Malware By Microsoft
AmiMoJo writes: Last month Microsoft changed its policy on protecting search settings to include any software that attempts to hijack searches as malware. As a result, this month the Ask Toolbar, which most people will probably recognize as being unwanted crapware bundled with Java, was marked as malware and will now be removed by Microsoft's security software built in to Windows 7 and above.
will java be also removed since it's bundeled with ask toolbar?
Be or ben't
That's all. Just Yay!
I feel there's a word that's appropriate... hypo... hypocr.... oh, MS Word told me the word I'm looking for is "hyper". Yep, what a bunch of hypers.
I hope that's the next target to be considered malware. Probably not by Microsoft (as it serves their needs) but hopefully by an anti-virus company.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Anything that installs a toolbar in your browser is malware.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
In other news, the US is incensed with the latest Chinese spying allegations.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
what took them so long?
1,753,378 to go.
Why does ANYONE use Microsoft's monthly removal? It is what they consider malware or spyware not what everyone else in the world considers it. I haven't ever taken that stupid update.
If Microsoft removes competitor's toolbars, but not the Bing toolbar, isn't that an antitrust lawsuit waiting to happen?
Great, but how about marking as malware every bundled software that come with an installer? It doesn't seem complicated to me, it I install SomeProgram.exe then any other software unrelated to SomeProgram.exe should be marked as malware and removed.
Elok
I always remember this image of IE7 stuffed with toolbars. A similar test was done on Windows XP.
In the case of IE7, this was done as a test to see if the reset function would work correctly. It did.
The bing toolbar gets bundled with directx or something so hopefully microsoft will be consistent with their policy!
SURELY NOT!!!!!
loading all this crap was tolerated by Microsoft because it was the main impetus for people buying new PCs.
Now that Android is taking over the personal OS landscape, and PC sales are dropping, MS doesn't gain as much as they used to, and now actually feels the pain from allowing this to happen, they decide to remove them.
Then make the bundle crapware Easy to uninstall, and so on.
at this pace, within a couple years I'll like Microsoft more than I like Mozilla.
Good. It is malware. I can't think of a browser toolbar that I wouldn't consider to be malware to some degree. Has anyone in the past 5 years intentionally installed one of those things? My impression is that they only ever get installed because someone wasn't paying enough attention when they installed some crappy piece of software, and it was bundled in.
Took them long enough. In my IT shop we have been calling it a malware vector for years.
Oh no, the facebook generation is reaching Slashdot.
That lately, I'm thinking of MSoft and Oracle as two middle school girls in a cat fight.
All the "negative checkoff" (click NOT to install) and all the (CNET downloads.com e.g.) sites where banner ads mislead to click on them rather than the download file button you are looking for should be treated as malware, starting a long time ago.
Gently reply
All toolbars are malware, what is the big deal. I took user install rights away, because of toolbars. They were just causing to many problems.
Everybody I know has multiple toolbars on their internet. None of them has problems with malware. I even specifically asked the ask toolbar whether or not it was malware, and it said (and I quote) "that's ridiculous".
Annoying Oracle can't be a bad thing. I can't believe they bundle it when Java is needed for so many enterprise apps - surely the reputational damage is worth more than the revenue from bundling the toolbar? It makes them look cheap and certainly not enterprise.
So yeah, good for Microsoft. They're doing some good things these days. Perhaps a bit like IBM when they were knocked off of their perch, MS now realise they need to actually produce good products and play nicer with customers.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
YOUR INTRUSIVE WINDOWS UPDATE!
The latest batch of updates magically moved Microsoft Office Upload Center startup configuration from msconfig/regedit entries TO THE DAMN TASK SCHEDULER! WTF?!
</rant>
I praise them for the rare use case where they use this intrusive omni-present program for good. This is four times, that I remember, in the last year that they have done a sweeping removal of malware with Windows Update
Ask finally got what it's been asking for all along
Next up - McAffee.
Then Java, then Ffflash. I can see we're gunna need a longer wall. And maybe a conveyor belt.
why anyone would want a toolbar to begin with. It's obviously "malware" in so many ways.
I'm seriously disappointed in the browser area as well. Why can't we have a browser that does ONE THING WELL: browse the Web. I don't care for anything extraneous to surfing. About the only thing I might want besides supporting protocol standards is tabs and a bookmark feature. Nothing else. I don't want or need the dancing baloney. I don't understand the need for programs to do everything for users. I guess growing up on the command line has given me a certain outlook as to how programs should do one thing well.
if you want to make sure Aunt Ethel doesn't install this in the first place.
"most people will probably recognize as being unwanted crapware"
Were truer words ever spoken?
Is the conduit bing browser hijack also considered malware? Cause it bloody well should.
I remember some goofy ways installers would try to trick users into toolbars, including double negatives: "Do you not want to not install the Foo toolbar?" or "Skip the bypass of the Foo toolbar installation?".
Table-ized A.I.
Not really - it's easy enough to change the default search on IE to google from bing, and it's easy enough to change the default search on google Chrome to bing (or even ask, if that's what you really want). There's no hypocrisy there in saying ask is malware - it most definitely is.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The Skype installer and updater bundles software that sets and attempts to maintain homepages and default search to Bing.
Now when does Norton and McCrapAfee get flagged as malware?
I've seen people install the Google toolbar because they thought that was how to use Google... I've removed it a lot as well.
I gotta say. It's about time. I've been stripping that piece-of-crap browser hijacker out of just about every machine I see. Oracle should be horsewhipped for partnering with those Ask Toolbar assholes.
I've installed a few Google things, like the globe map thingy, and found the services that Google places on the PC are designed to be UNSTOPPABLE unless the entire app is removed. Chrome is pretty much the same. Yes, Google does allow for a clean uninstall, but if you wish to use their apps in any way, the spyware that Google boots up with your machine cannot be disabled in a way that stays disabled.
Then again, all major PC companies are getting worse with time- after the sickeningly evil scandal of Dice ordering the stealing of major projects on SourceForge so they can be wrapped with malware installers, I've discovered by other 'safe' app download sites now mostly do the same. Finding a good wide source of Windows applications that are guaranteed to be untouched by the download site is now near impossible. The 'clean' sites tend to offer only a tiny subset of all available 'free' utilities.
Obviously, the GROOMING Apple, Google and Microsoft do on their walled-garden mobile OS APP stores ensures most people now accept the most vile software practises as the price of getting free or cheap software. Providers on the classic windows side simply copy these worst practices now.
If Oracle removes Ask toolbar from Java Installer, can SourceForge provide us one version with Ask added back?
Does Oracle prevent or allow the ask.com toolbar to be installed when the Java runtime is installed? Does their policies allow any of the bundled software to be installed?
Do Oracle contractors install bundled software onto customer's computers or do they ask the customer as part of the contract if it will be installed?
I wonder what it is like among the companies that bundle software and use their own software if they have policies in place to prevent the bundled software from being installed?
other than looking for a better husband.
This is not malware at all. No ones being fooled into installing it. You have to read and if you don't read that's YOUR fault. I'm pretty sure MS going to get sued and MS will loose because its not tricking anyone into installing it and if you don't read the agreement that again is YOUR faults. Ask did install this toolbar without permission in the past and they get sued for it too so im not sticking up that. Is Ask is a good trustworthy business? No they are not, that is a fact. but in this case Ask isn't doing anything wrong.
Please show me how this install is being 1. forced install 2. uses trickery to get installed? 3. cant be uninstalled
Jack of all trades,master of none
They must no have paid up in time.
Just wondering if someone will make a toolbar cleaner
I'd expect by now that browser plug-ins have replaced anything a toolbar could offer.
Now MS can focus on getting Windows labelled at malware.
And make sure it does not install itself in the first place without your explicit opt-in permission. Otherwise I consider it malware.
All toolbars are malware. what the hell was MS waiting for?
No matter who prevails, you still have to live with a rabid victor.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Don't blame Ask, it doesn't install itself. Blame Oracle! Oracle's Java attempts to install Ask with every update. For awhile, that was almost daily.
Ask toolbar is so hard to remove, that I considered it malware for years.
It looks like this only applies to older versions of the Ask toolbar. According to the link in the post, "The latest version of this application is not detected by our objective criteria, and is not considered unwanted software."
I do hope that their "objective criteria" will help to keep the Ask toolbar from being quite as annoying as it was, however.
What about the desktop ads they're supposedly forcing on some people through mandatory Windows updates?
This pleases me greatly. I'm sick of having to uninstall that crap from all my workstations.
YAY! Ask toolbar has been annoying and hard to remove
Frosty Piss has been a thing for a very, very long time.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
I've HATED Ask for years and never gotten the answers it promises, so thanks Microsoft.
If this becomes common practice among all of the malware checkers, then I can retire my PowerShell script that remotely uninstalls this bastard software.
Bearded Dragon