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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.
What is the smallest browser space you have ever seen remaining? Once at a friends house I asked to use the internet and half the screen vertically plus around 1/10 horizontally was taken up by various "toolbars". I'd never even seen a horizontal one before that day.
I experience that with my wife. She's got a reasonably nice desktop for doing what she does (nothing important) but complains it runs slow. It was screaming fast once upon a time, so I go and run and rerun all the anti-virus software and malware removers, remove have the extensions that have installed themselves, reboot a few times in the process, and it's screaming fast again. The most toolbars I've counted was at least 6, and the search is almost always stuck on something undesirable.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I'm hoping they will automatically uninstall Chrome as well, since it somehow manages to reinstall itself surreptitiously so often. So many third party programs will install it during an update if you're not paying attention to which boxes to uncheck; and I know every time I go visit my mother she'll be asking about what this Chrome thing is and how to get rid of it. Most often it's the anti-malware software that puts that shit there, which is ironic since I consider anything being installed without my explicit permission to be malware. It should get rid of googlebar or whatever that's called, and all other opt-out software.