Sunbeltblog comments
According to Eric Howes' latest test on the state of adware detections on well-known advertising software, CounterSpy is the only AS vendor to detect it with an option to ignore. The other 11 AS vendors don't detect it.
MySearch Bar is, however, detected by 7 of the AS vendors with CounterSpy being the only one offering to quarantine it at the time of the test.
The 240 who voted "no" are possibly weatherbug operatives and family members lending support !
Notwithstanding, I watch commercial TV knowing that the price to be paid is ads.
However I have not experienced my
TV, video & DVD setting being constantly altered by ad companies ...so far.
Ads are not the villian per se.{albeit annoying}
It is the many stealth installs and interfering with PC setings and the rest.
jp
It depends on how you define adware really. If you define it as any advertisement-supported software, then yes, it is adware. However, when I think of the term 'adware,' I think of spyware, which WeatherBug is not (and that's how I voted). My parents use it on their computer and while WeatherBug's loaded with advertising, I have removed it successfully (and then reinstalled), they fully and knowingly consented to installing it (by downloading it themselves), and it's useful. Find me a spyware application that meets those specs.
Any advertisment supported software is Adware.
The problem is some are a lot more agressive than others.
First we had static Ads. You either saw the same Ad every time you started the program, or it cycled through a couple already inside the program.
These Ads were either displayed within the adware program as you ran it -much like Opera these days or clearly displayed as a click through screen you had to get by before the program started , or when it exited.
No online connection needed what so ever. No confusion where all the popups was coming from. Remember those days?
Those are prefectly fine to me. But sadly...
Then people started to realise Ads could become dynamic by downloading new Ads from the central server. You could now display new Ads without making changes to the Ad-program!
Okay, feels a bit creepy to have foreign processes gettting downloads from elsewhere but at least they didn't really invade your privacy.
But did they really?
Then People started realising since we are downloading new Ads, why not upload info about what the user is doing to help target our ads?
And this idea covers the whole spectrum of ideas from 'harmless' tagging and aggregation of data to specific targetting.
That where the whole spying bit comes in.
At the same time, people started to realise that instead of displaying
adverts only within the program, they could display popups by piggbacking on the browser.
It was after the start of the internet era in the 90s, everyone had a browser. And it was almost always on.It was perfect medium to display popups and to bypass firewalls.
And Not just popups, why not drive traffic by hijacking homepages , search engines?
Then people started doing all sort of tricks to get people to install such crap. From bundling them in P2P, ActiveX driveby downloads and now stealth installs by exploits.
Steve Gibson's Opt out started the game against these creeps. Ad-aware and Spybot followed. 'Adware' started to resist removal, to the extent that these days some are starting to look like rootkits.
The problem is the majority of software calling themselves 'adware' at the time they were emerging into Public awareness was that they had the following spylike charateristics.
1) They collected info about users. Agreggrate or not.
2) They installed on unsuspecting users computer whether through deception, force or whatever.
3)They resisted removal, or came without an uninstall program.
In short, 'Adware' was no different from 'spyware' in the way it installed, and the actions it took.
Nowadays, some of the people are cleaning up their act but the damage is done already.
In the minds of the public, Adware=spyware.
It will take a lot of time to really change this perception.
Commenting by HaloScan
