Claria

[Guest]

I really believe claria is a pain in the butt, any thoughts?

http://blogs.technet.com/stevedod/archive/2005/07/11/407525.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/claria_letter.mspx--2nd Law of Thermodynamics: Chaos will Reign.///////////////////--Anthrax--//////////////////

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Yeah--their old stuff was a pain. Badly written, caused the users problems,
and hard to uninstall as you mention.

Here's the rub, though. If they reinvent themselves, and say they won't do
that stuff anymore, and will have beautiful easy to understand eulas, ads
that clearly state where they come from, and a normal uninstall via add or
remove programs--what is the legal basis for continuing to list these newer
"products" for removal?

 

[Guest]

Have they really changed? i believe i had found their sw in some machines
lately with the same characterisitics as the old ones (don't remember
however which ones were though). Well if they have changed good for them!

Yeah--their old stuff was a pain. Badly written, caused the users
problems, and hard to uninstall as you mention.

Here's the rub, though. If they reinvent themselves, and say they
won't do that stuff anymore, and will have beautiful easy to
understand eulas, ads that clearly state where they come from, and a
normal uninstall via add or remove programs--what is the legal basis
for continuing to list these newer "products" for removal?

--


2nd Law of Thermodynamics: Chaos will Reign.

///////////////////
--Anthrax--
//////////////////

 

[Adelphia]

Bill,
There is a simple rationale that Microsoft should follow. If a software
company does something "nasty" they should be blocked by the Anti Spyware
program. Now they allegedly fix their processes and promise to be good.
Microsoft opens the gate and lets them continue in the ASSumed belief that
they have "seen the light". A few months later they begin to return to their
old ways to get back to the same level of required revenue to sustain the
company. Since they are now ASSumed to be squeaky clean their spyware
collects gobs of info that is sold to their old network of evil data miners.

The better solution is to block these companies for a reasonable period of
time beyond their promise to be nice. Or, to promote a law that requires
them to post a substantial bond for the same time period that "encourages
them" to be nice. The law would also have escalating provisions for multiple
offenses. Simply trusting known crooks who now claim to nice is - well
silly!

Dick

 

[Greg R]

From some information purpose.
According to post from http://www.spywarewarrior.com/ forum

That cool web search is now cool root search. It now designed to
install at the kernel level which makes it harder to move. I don't
know if it can on non-nt based system. I think NT system are more
vulnerable.

Greg Ro

 

[Bill Sanderson]

I haven't seen a product such as I hypthetically described from Claria, i
believe. However, some of the ad-ware installed with Bearshare, last I
looked, was pretty close to what I was describing. The only place it failed
was on the uninstall--it required a web connection and one of those
graphically displayed password critters to remove.

So--as far as I know Claria doesn't have a "reformed" product yet--but I
could easly just not be aware of it, and all the signs are that they are
headed that way.

--

 

[Bill Sanderson]

The way I've thought about this is:

spynet collects data about removed objects. Presumably it can tell Gator
from Claria, and "old Claria" from "new Claria."

As long as there are significant numbers of Gator and "old Claria" removals
going on out there, I think that current installs should be flagged or
alerted. It is likely that the default choice is going to be
"ignore"--because it would be hard to justify anything stronger on technical
grounds related to just the "new" code. However, the detection would still
be there, and knowledgable folks will change that ignore.

Not a perfect choice, but better than giving it a complete pass.

--

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Microsoft Antispyware already detects some spyware which has characteristics
of root kits, and I expect this kind of detection to be improved and
expanded.

However, this stuff isn't easy at all--everyon needs to be clear that both
antivirus and antispyware are important, and both need to be kept up to
date.

CoolWebSearch is all about money--and not in any good way. They are not in
any way comparable to Claria.