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What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

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Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#21

Post by Cthulhu_ »

weavie wrote: post #11

I regularly get called by people complaining that their computer no longer works. Pretty much every time it turns out that their machine is loaded with crapware. It amazes me how people just put up with random browser windows popping up and having to search via some random search engine that has been imposed on them. At the minute I just have to put up with spending a few hours removing the worst offenders and then r…

Back in the day I was an intern at an elementary school, and the computers there had a piece of software installed that basically disallowed any change (unless entering a password by an administrator like myself), and if a change did happen it was undone at a reboot. I'm not sure how it worked or even how it's called, but that's another option. I'm sure it didn't keep browser history either though, although I'm sure there's workarounds for that too.

Just don't give people administrator accounts in Windows, that way they can't / shouldn't be able to install anything, and definitely not something that can permanently change stuff in a computer.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#22

Post by Vespasian »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #15
Renaud wrote: post #14

Instead of dowloading from Sourceforge (loaded with ads and its own devious 'installer'), CNET, Download, etc, there are no-crapware alternatives that offer more management tools as well (remembering your list of apps across machines, automated updates, discoverability): Ninite: nice, simple, installer: just select apps and let the installer do it all for you. AllMyApps: all the apps, no crapware (at least for now).…

A nice list. How long they're all around? I still can't shake the feeling that it's only a matter of time before Moloch gets to them and they'll start serving crapware like any others. I'd love to be wrong on that.

Ninite is a really greate tool I've used it countless times while having a student job at our universities user support from 2010-2013.

I really hope their business model (selling an update tool to private users and a side-wide deploy tool to businesses) works out until there is a usable windows store / package manager around.

Each time I have to help someone setup a new windows laptop I get reminded why I'm using Linux as my main OS ;)

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#23

Post by dspillett »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

> Because when the product is free the real product is YOU. I disagree with this conclusion. Also, I have a related issue with some of the opinions I hear e.g. on HN that confuse me. Many a person says in defense of ads - "but surely authors have to support themselves, otherwise there'd be no site/software", "TANSTAAFL", etc. But this seems to me to be in disagreement with observable reality. What I see is a strong a…

> That's why I also feel no guilt for browsing with AdBlock on

I understand the reasoning, but you seem to be taking it to a logical extreme. There are some reputable and useful sites that use ad income, I don't routinely use AdBlock or similar for that reason. If a site annoys me with its ads it gets DNS blacklisted (pointed towards my "you don't want to go there" page via local DNS config.

> neither the ads nor the ad-serving pages are a good deal for anyone in any way.

Hence the DNS blacklist, though this isn't overly helpful (mainly because new sites spring up constantly) and not useful to non-techies (most people don't run a local DNS cache that they can drop a new block into with a simple script call).

I am considering a browser extension that takes it from this point of view rather than the AdBlock point of view though, i.e. "I don't want to go to such sites" rather than "I'll go to such sites, but they aren't serving me ads and other crap". One of the many personal projects that will probably never see the light of day because I'm too busy with other things... (so if someone else wants to copy the idea, go ahead and I'll be an alpha/beta tester!). Something that either intercepts page transitions and warns "you've previously marked this site as having irritating pop-ups, are you sure you want to proceed?" and/or scans pages for links and visually marks those pointing towards marked domains. The next step would then be some sort of distributed store for collating what people mark so it can warn about sites I've not previously visited, though of course if such a thing became popular enough to be useful there would be the constant game of trying to stop people abusing this to block competitors sites or de-list their own.

> As for the Downloads.com, CNET, et al. ... they deserve to be down.

I can't say I disagree there!

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#24

Post by thegeomaster »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #21
weavie wrote: post #11

I regularly get called by people complaining that their computer no longer works. Pretty much every time it turns out that their machine is loaded with crapware. It amazes me how people just put up with random browser windows popping up and having to search via some random search engine that has been imposed on them. At the minute I just have to put up with spending a few hours removing the worst offenders and then r…

Back in the day I was an intern at an elementary school, and the computers there had a piece of software installed that basically disallowed any change (unless entering a password by an administrator like myself), and if a change did happen it was undone at a reboot. I'm not sure how it worked or even how it's called, but that's another option. I'm sure it didn't keep browser history either though, although I'm sure…

Are you possibly talking about DeepFreeze[1]? My school had it too, IIRC.

[1]: http://www.faronics.com/en-uk/products/deep-freeze/enterpris...

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#26

Post by serf »

psykovsky wrote: post #13
jenscow wrote: post #2

This is the #1 reason Windows is no longer on my kid's computers; it's too easy to install crap-ware no matter what security package you use.

That's the #1 reason ALL the computers in my house aren't windows but Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is bundled with crap-ware , too; it's just more subtle.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.html

http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/09/ubuntu-bakes-amazon-...

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#27

Post by apetrovic »

Microsoft dropped the ball with lack of App Store. With all app store's drawbacks, that's the place where regular user can pay easily without thinking will someone steal his/her credit car number, the place where applications should be harmless, and the place where (and this is important) the user can compare prices between similar applications.

Windows doesn't have the app store. And nobody (read: very, very small percentage) is willing to type the credit car number on some unknown site to pay for some utility. So shareware died, and shareware authors went to the dark side.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#28

Post by markdown »

tdicola wrote: post #6

I had to install the DirectX user runtime recently and was pretty shocked to see Microsoft has loaded it up with lots of crapware. First when you click download from its page at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35 you're prompted to set MSN as your homepage, download the malicious software removal tool, and download IE11 (if you're on Windows). Then after you skip that you get the download and…

> and download IE11 (if you're on Windows)

This has my support :)

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#29

Post by simonh »

bbayer wrote: post #5

The thing is you don't actually know what these programs are doing behind the scenes. Hijacking browser home page is the most innocent thing.

A colleague managed to get one of thse toolbar things on his computer. It was a nightmare. It installed a second hidden browser plugin to keep re-installign the toolbar and re-setting your default search engine every time the browser restarts. Then there was a startup exe installed to re-install the plugins and toolbar on system restart. Then there was something else rooted in there somewhere that kept downloading and re-enabling that if you disabled it in msconfig.

We had to do some serious registry hacking and manual system32 folder cleanup to finally kill the blasted thing.

Not that I've had to deal with anything like that at home since 2007. OSX all the way baby! I've probably got back a couple of weeks of my life over the last 7 years, when you add in time spent messing with device driver version issues and general system tuning.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#30

Post by favadi »

serf wrote: post #26
psykovsky wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the #1 reason ALL the computers in my house aren't windows but Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is bundled with crap-ware , too; it's just more subtle. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.html http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/09/ubuntu-bakes-amazon-...

I wouldn't call it crap-ware. Sure, it's turned on by default but there is an option to turn them off.
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