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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
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.
1,753,378 to go.
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.
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.
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.
Yup. The effing bing bar is something I delete on a weekly basis from several machines. Granted it's also stupid user syndrome.
The main issue *I* have with it, is that when I disable it - You know... I like to disable stuff I don't use - it refuses to stay disabled.
There are schedules, and protection tasks, and all sorts of other asshatery that will keep that process running. That's what you would normally call malware - something that refuses to stay disabled or removed.
For me, it came with both Skype and DirectX. Few other things I can't remember before that. A quick Google search reveals that it comes with a lot of things.
The Bing toolbar doesn't change search settings without prompting, and is not removed. Same with the Google toolbar.
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
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.
No, because the restricted behavior isn't bundling, it's changing search providers without prompting.
It's mentioned in the article in about every single sentence, so I can see how you missed it.
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.
He's not talking about Microsoft's antivirus/antimalware, he's talking about the 'malicious software removal' that's part of Windows Update even if you don't have MS's AV installed.
It removes a very few specific things that can be difficult to get rid of.
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.
Last time I saw the Ask toolbar, it couldn't be uninstalled through the control panel. For me, that's pretty much what makes it malware, in addition to the browser search hijacking of course.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
The most toolbars I've counted was at least 6
Amateur
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
If Oracle removes Ask toolbar from Java Installer, can SourceForge provide us one version with Ask added back?