Wednesday, June 04, 2003

Hijacked! (11:00:56 AM) Today's beef - spyware.  I hadn't had a whole lot of experience with this stuff myself, but it was certainly on my radar... which makes me a little sheepish to admit that I didn't check the databases before installing "Grokster" from download.com (in hopes of finding a copy of an old Prince song for a party).  Not only was the software non-functional, but it took me hours to ferret out and remove the different pieces of spyware/adware that this piece of excrement installed on my system.  It's one thing to ask if the user wants to install a piece of software which either posts ads or tracks behavior, and it is entirely another to silently install such a beast.  I can see people being willing to trade discounts or waived shareware fees for this sort of thing, but I myself would never choose to do so, and it seems fraudulent, not to mention horribly rude, to make that decision for me without my knowledge.  A pox on all such vendors! Comments? []

© Copyright 2003 Glen Daniels.