• Download Pc Wizard Portable 2012 Olympic Medals By Country

Call it Adware, Malware, Spyware, Crapware, it's simply unwanted. Every non-technical relative I've ever talked to has toolbars they apparently can't see, apps running in the background, browser home pages set to Russian Google clones, and they have no idea how it got that way. Here's how they get that way. You go to download something reasonable.

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I wanted to download a Skype Recorder, so I went. (Yes, I linked here to the URL because they don't need Google Juice from me.) OK at this point I'm screwed. The green button CLEARLY desperately wants me to click on it. I totally ignore the tiny 'Direct Download Link' below the friendly button. I have no idea what that glyph icon means, but it's pointing down, so that must mean download.

Welcome to the Download.com installer! More green buttons, awesome.

Pre-selected Express installation? Super helpful, I love that.

Ah, and next to it there's text in the same font size and color that I totally won't read that says: Install Search Protect to set CHANGE my home page and TOTALLY MESS UP default search to Conduit Search THAT I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF AND NEITHER DO YOU and NOW THIS IS AUDACIOUS. prevent attempts to change my browser settings.

In other words, we, Download.com, are going to totally change the way you use you computer and browser the way and prevent you from easily changing it back. We're going to do it now, when you press Next, and oh, by the way, we have Admin on your computer because just a moment ago you pressed YES on the Windows Warning that we could mess things up, because everyone ignores that. Or, you can click Custom, because non-technical relative ALWAYS clicks Custom. Technical people ALWAYS press Custom. Other people? Ah, nice, when I press Custom it's set to.wait for it.the same stuff that was gonna happen if you pressed Express. AND WE ARE ONLY ON STEP 2.

What ever happened to clicking just once and getting what I needed? OMG 'It communicates several times a day with servers to check for new offers and change ads on my computer?'

I totally want that. Thanks Green Button! I'm sure that if I press Decline here that it will mess up my installation of the original thing I wanted to install.I have forgotten what that was, but I'll just keep going. I thought I was already here. I'm sure I want this also. Does my Mouse not work? I'll click it again.

Backing up my files without asking seems legit. What have we been doing all this time? I am disappointed in us, Internet, that this is a business. Someone wrote this, for their job, directed by their middle manager, who was directed by their rich boss. There was a meeting (there's always a meeting) where it was discussed on how we could most effectively fool non-technical relatives into installing crap. A Dark Pattern is a type of user interface that appears to have been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills.

This isn't cool and it needs to stop. I won't be visiting Download.com anymore. I'll only install software from Vendors I trust, like Oracle. Gosh, maybe I need to install that 'Crap Cleaner' everyone talks about so I can remove these unwanted toolbars.

Ok, forgot it. I'll just stick with the official Windows Updates because I'm sure I want all those.

Sound off in the comments. And thank you for not sparing the annoying Bing Bar / Desktop in Microsoft Update. I have reached the point where my non-technical relatives no longer have administrator access to their own machines. I install the basics for them, and if they want to install anything else, it goes through me. I find that a good set of pre-installed apps takes care of them quite nicely, and they don't need to download crap from the Internet. They can use the App Store if they want to feel in control.

There is no safe, easy way for an ordinary user to get Windows desktop software. (Not to mention that there's still the convention that any time you install any Windows app, for some reason you need to give it Admin permissions.) This is one of the big reasons the iTunes App Store is such a successful model. And why possibly the biggest Windows 8 mistake Microsoft made was not selling actual Windows apps in their 'Windows App Store.'

A phone-like app store filled with shitty half-tablet apps? A phone-like app store filled with the functionality of the Windows desktop ecosystem, combined with a security sandbox?

Microsoft thought their tablet API is more important then hooking people into their ecosystem. They were very, very wrong. I have to say, it's Oracle that disappoint me the most. I expect people writing freeware apps to try to cadge a few bucks by bundling them with crapware. I expect people running download aggregators like download.com to have a business model that involves bundling crapware. I do NOT expect a multi-billion dollar database giant to try to score a few measly extra bucks on the side by bundling some garbage toolbar with their Java installer. It's embarrassing, it makes a company of 122,000 employees (according to Wikipedia) look like a couple of Eastern European grey-hats banging out code in their bedrooms.

Is this REALLY where 37 years of database development has brought them? I haven't used download.com since they implemented this.

The internet is a minefield it seems. I will admit I'm even annoyed when I carefully scan every adobe reader update just so I don't get burned with some toolbar and every time they slap a new reader icon on my desktop. I WILL FIND YOUR APP ON THE START SCREEN WHEN I NEED IT. It seems foxit reader also does this now. Sigh The most devious thing I have seen a lot is misleading adwords ads for ms security essentials. I explain to friends and relatives when they Google for ms security essentials to watch for misleading Google AdWords links above the real Microsoft.com links. The AdWords links are spyware and proceed to make a mess once installed.

I totally got suckerpunched by Conduit Search one day when I wasn't paying attention (I think I was setting a new machine with Paint.NET on it or something) and then my freakin' browser kept looking for this whacked out search, Google was gone, and no matter what homepage I set in my browser(s) (like setting it to blank thank you very much) it kept coming back to this stupid Conduit site (that looks a helluva lot like Google or Firefox or something). Finally figured out what had happened and quickly got rid of this POS. The worst part is that this isn't just coming from the fly-by-night guys but Oracle and even Microsoft have jumped onto this band wagon to try to promote their products subversively (I think Live Essentials tries to give you Messenger and change your browser/search to Bing). I'm very careful here, and never use any of the download sites when looking for proper software. But just last week, after finally having to install Acrobat on my work PC to view my tax info, I.almost. fell for it.

In fact, the download had already started when I saw that Adobe had tricked me into download some other crap. I had to cancel that dl and start over.

Totally agreed. The fact that this is an actual business is shameful. Plus, I bet even real malware authors have no respect for these devs:). I work at a big box retailer that fixes computers for people.

If it isn't sad enough that I have to explain this on an almost daily basis, it's made worse by the fact that computer repair industries profit obscenely by ripping people off and telling them they have 'viruses' when in fact they are just engulfed in malware. Very big difference between a virus that compromises your operating system and malware that trashes it up with ads, toolbars, and the like. The common denominator for these problems is information.

The more people are informed the less this shit will fly. What's sad is seeing the older generation being taken advantage of. There is a reason our clientele is almost always 35+ years old. Young people know better.

I try to help people by using generic 'SKU' codes for 'tech support' instead of charging them $150 to remove what isn't even a virus, but even this tactic is so discouraged that I've been told repeatedly by management that I need to use official 'workorders' and 'full-price' services. Like hell I will. Ninite for normal people, Chocolatey for developers. Never install Adobe Acrobat, use SumatraPDF. Don't install Java from the web, install using Chocolatey (silent, Ask toolbar free installer).

If possible, use a portable apps version of programs that require Java. Enable click-to-run for Chrome / Flash.

Yes, the Bing Toolbar thing is lame. You can hide that in Windows Update (right click / hide update) Also, people should keep in mind that this is one of the problems that's (mostly) solved with Windows Store apps. So you can't legitimately complain about this and be a Windows 8 holdout, in my opinion. That's one of the things why I love iOS. No fear installing apps. How's an ordinary Windows home user to survive with all those popups for fake virus alerts surfing the web, update this or that from untrusted sources.

They will probably just click Yes,Yes,Yes. With Windows you always have to fear installing non-mainstraim published software. It hurts the user and the app developer.

In that respect Windows failed for me as an OS. Although WinRT adresses this problem for the future, the desktop is still king in windows, and the problem will persist. I regularly get contacted by companies offering me a 'mutually beneficial' deal where they will take my open source software, bundle it with crapware, and offer me a cut of the proceeds. I usually ignore them and eventually they go away (usually after telling me what a fool I am for ignoring such an awesome deal). As much as it would be nice to make a big of cash for my open source efforts, the crapware/adware route has always felt unethical to me. And Scott, rather ironically, I had been just on the verge of releasing an open source Skype call recorder (with no crapware), when Microsoft scuppered my plans by killing the Skype desktop API. Dan Kline: It sounds like a broken record, but 'If it's free, YOU are the product'.

I'd like to see a tech community wrapped around exposing and bashing these vendors and their practices. Interesting how this mantra completely breaks down when you look at real (rather than shareware) open source products. It's simply not true for a proper GPL2 Linux distribution like Debian. Adrian: Do Mac's have any protection from bundling? And Linux installers/packages could be installing anything. Mac's don't per se.

But we all know they are going to be moving to a walled garden any day now. Yes, there is a complete culture difference. I would never search the internet for a software package and then download it.

We use the built in package management. It's apt-get install skype not google 'skype download' click first green button. If it's not available via package management, or I can't at least found a signed package from the actual vendor it doesn't get installed.

I know that might seem totally alien to people who have never used an OS with built in package management but that's how we roll over here. And hey, it's probably inevitable that even MS (Apple is already well on the way) will being reinventing this particular wheel in the near future. I love this article, because it's 100% true, and I should know, I work in the industry. I think Stan makes the best point here about the success of the Mac app store - at the end of the day these software developers need to make money on their product, and the best way to do that with free-ware is through tool bar searches or adding pop/injected ads. It's my opinion that the PC world moved this direction because users won't pay for the software, so developers found a work around. However, Mac users embraced paid apps/software, even if for only 99 cents, and doesn't have the same issues as PC users. Scott missed Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Flash's sneaky attempts at installing McAfee.

Thanks to IE10+ I no longer install flash plugin separately. When I need flash I switch to IE from FF which is my regular browser. Yesterday spent greater part of an hour trying to get rid of sneakware called IncrediBar. Bloody thing has a service that you can shutdown (even as an admin). Thankfully you can disable it and reboot.

It installs Search Providers and sets them up as default and practically 'impossible' to 'Uninstall' even though the 'Uninstall' link will be gone from your Programs list. I had Bing Desktop installed for the wallpapers till I noticed it was running 3 additional services.UNINSTALLED. Overall, Jon Galloway makes some very good suggestions above, but as others have indicated, these sneaksters know that one person in the family is going to be gullible enough to 'not check' and that's going to be the end of it, so they keep trying.

Sad sad sad state of the 'desktop' software industry and probably a reflection of why people are abandoning it in droves:(. I have no idea how it happened, but I have somehow ended up with something called Apps Hat installed on my laptop. Pi kappa alpha risk awareness handbook 2. It got its claws into IE11 and Firefox, and injects its own page with two massive download buttons in-between page navigations. And I'm technical, and I check installers, so I either missed something super subtle or it was installed without even giving me the option. I'm going to try some forensics before I repave the laptop. Actually, I've just thought: I install a lot of stuff with Chocolately, which uses silent installs that are configured by the people who submit the packages, which are probably set up to use the Express or Default options. Oh, one other thing.

To be fair to Oracle, though it pains me to do so, the Ask toolbar is a hangover from the end days of Sun, when they were trying to monetize Java to compensate for the fact that Dell's $1000 PCs had caught up with their $10000 'workstations'. It was a ten year deal with Ask, and Oracle inherited it as part of the purchase (along with a bunch of IP and patents that turned out to be useless, ha ha). Core Temp is another, particularly evil one, if you aren't careful to NOT get the installer. It used to come as a.zip, so I was delighted when I saw that they had gotten an installer.

Unfortunately, they have chosen some wrapper called 'InstallIQ' to 'manage' the installation. InstallIQ will very similarly try to get you to install all sorts of crapware, which you can avoid by doing a custom install. Or so you think. Even if you disallow everything, it ignores you and INSTALLS IT ANYWAY, along with crap they haven't even presented to you. You can still get Core Temp without the wrapper, but they've cleverly hidden that away. This is all on their own official web site.

All of this is almost as annoying as Microsoft sending every search to Bing in Windows 8.1, as part of a feature that took one of the most useful aspects of Metro apps (multi-app search) and completely knee-capped it. I don't remember being asked my informed consent and I sure don't think the feature improved. (Yeah, maybe it's in the EULA. @markrendle WRT to Chocolatey Packages installing unwanted items, this is unfortunately a possibility, and that is what the Report Package link on each package on Chocolatey.org is intended for, so that this can be corrected by the package maintainer, and/or the Chocolatey Development Team. If you find any packages that are installing anything other than what you expect, please let us know, and we will get it fixed. There is some thought processes around the automatic triage of Chocolatey Packages every time a new version is released to guard against these kinds of things, but this is still a bit away from happening. These Trojan install options are the number one support issue I have seen.

The first example features cNet, a CBS owned company. One would think that a reputable company wouldn't do this slight of hand trickery. Perhaps NBC, ABC, or Fox should do a story. But wait, the one that hits our users the most is the Adobe Reader install. It has the Google toolbar as a default install. Again, a reputable company engaging in very bad practices. One would think the major news media could make a nice story out of this.

Tell me about it - just a couple of days ago I downloaded alcohol 52% to make an ISO of a newly bought windows CD for installing onto a Mac (with no cd drive). Your post is bang on the money, Scott. This particular practice is infuriating to witness and I stumble on that green button so many times before stopping myself and cancelling the install altogether. A clever act of trickery knowing that 99% of users want a very quick download/install experience and will therefore stop at nothing to get the process over with as quickly as possible, the implementation of these downloads on a psychological level are masterful, but at the same time disgraceful.

It's nice to see someone react with a blog post to such practices, and at the same time inject a little humour;-). I thought the Bing Bar and Bing Desktop apps only appeared if you explicitly installed 'Microsoft Update' atop of 'Windows Update' at some point - this specifically states your desire to get other bits of Microsoft software. Also, crucially, you always have to explicitly select the Bing stuff if you want it to install, so I don't think it is really on a par with anything else you demonstrate. For a while I've been accidentally installing Google Toolbar and Chrome periodically and having to uninstall them every time; only later did I find out that I have to uncheck a unnoticed box in the FlashPlayer updater. Even though I enjoy how you write with humor Scott, this subject is very important and needs to be taken seriously.

But who can the consumer (the one who needs the help here, not us techies) rely on. There is always the 'get a Mac' guy in this debate, well Conduit Search runs on a Mac also, and will even change your homepage when let in right through the front door, these scumbags are simply shooting for the largest target to get the most installs. The end result of all of this crap is that Microsoft gets the blame from end users, they think it's Windows to blame, not themselves, and it tarnishes the brand over and over. You can't simply tell someone to update Adobe and Java anymore, because doing that simple task will end up shoving toolbars, and entirely new browser experiences onto their computer. I find Googles pushing of Chrome in this manner to be a disgusting practice, and Microsoft certainly dabbles in it with the Bing Bar etc. It's so funny, that my answer to the question of how to stop this for the consumer, is buy a Windows RT tablet, or an iPad, or at the very least to tame their searches for software by using duckduckgo.com.

Something HAS to be done, it's not funny anymore, it's destroying the Windows consumer experience. What about the download pages where they put adbots that put a link called.

You're swimming in a sea of download links, many are giant green download buttons. Which is the one you use to download what you're actually there for?

As far as installers go. I find myself using the 'portable' version of apps. One, it prevents this non-sense from happening to me (random crapware) and the app is self-contained and doesn't install into my profile and registry and what-not.

Makes reinstall of the OS much simpler. This post kind of misses the point by yelling in the wrong direction, but does reflect the state of the end-user software industry today. People want everything for free. Complex software that takes months, maybe years to develop.must. be free, it is our constitutional right to get it for nothing and be angry if it - God forbid - installs a shiny ad toolbar along the way.

The same is true for companies providing the hosting and download infrastructure, this service must also be free and available 24/7 or else. At the same time we'll gladly leave $10 at Starbucks for a cup of warm water in it and even say thank you when we leave. If only people would pay for the software they use - even a fraction of its value - no one would ever need things like those addressed in this post. @Robert Seso I often get emails from different third party companies who want my software to install toolbars and other crap, and they often can't take a hint that when I say 'no way in hell', I mean exactly that. Of course developers want to make money (I sure as heck do), and it's disappointing that our efforts are unrewarded, but inflicting this sort of crap on people is something I can't countenance. However, I fully agree that I wish people would pay even that $10 for a piece of software they'll find useful, and use over again! What gets me, is that in a lot of your screen shots, the 'Decline' button is either reduced to a small, legalese-like link, or is styled in such a way that it looks like it is disabled (gray, with washed out fonts, and such).

As a UX guy, that really ticks me off. How many people are conditioned to the point where they don't even bother trying to click on these links, and pick the Accept button simply because they feel they have no choice? There's a special place in hell reserved for the kind of people who create (or direct others to create) this kind of deceptive UX. For everyone complaining that it's a sign of Oracle's dark, cold heart that the Java installer is bundled with crapware: the original blame for that particular bad decision should fall on Sun, who made it before Oracle acquired them. Then-Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz even raved about all the wonderful moneymaking opportunities installers for their free software products like Java and OpenOffice provided them on his corporate blog back in 2008. That blog disappeared after the acquisition, but (scroll down to the entry titled 'The Inside Story (Java, Microsoft and MySQL)').

In Schwartz's words: Just last month, we distributed more than 60,000,000 Java runtimes, to users all across the planet. The number is growing, as more content is built for Java 6 and the upcoming JavaFX, as more PC's join the network, and as more workers join the workforce (and are assigned Java-enabled laptops).

At this point, I'd bet there are about 1,000,000,000 (that's a billion) Java runtimes installed on PC's around the world. With more by the day - each generating revenue for Sun. As with most of our software products, we don't distribute products without intent - like Google, our products are both a means of acquiring customers, and generating revenue. Foot traffic still counts, but in today's economy, software distribution's a lot easier to manage and monetize than a real estate portfolio. After all, who wouldn't want to meet a few hundred million new customers? Of course, just because a company you acquired had a bad policy doesn't mean that you have to continue that policy.

Download Pc Wizard Portable 2012 Olympic Medals By Country

So as the steward of Java now, it does reflect badly on Oracle that they continue this kind of scummy behavior. But it's not a case of Oracle taking something that used to be pristine and fouling it with their greed; it was pretty well fouled when they found it. This is a big reason I avoid Windows when I can. Windows 8.1 is good OS. I've enjoyed using it on occasion, but I can't shake the feeling that when I do I've got a target on my chest.

Other systems aren't immune, but in practice using something like Ubuntu makes this a non-issue. I hesitated posting this because I didn't want to encourage a 'My OS can beat up your OS' type of discussion.

However, ISVs and Microsoft need to take this issue seriously. Is a walled-garden app store the right approach?

Is a noisy boycot of Download.com and crapware products the solution? All I know is that it's hurting our industry. I always hated this practice.

However, I think we're just seeing a symptom of a deeper problem. Any software that's free or open source for PCs (that is not a Windows app or whatever) that is being distributed over the internet has distribution costs relating to bandwidth usage. That bandwidth needs to be covered, somehow. Right now, for the most commonly used methods of distribution, the distributor bears the full weight of the distribution costs. It's even worse the more popular your software is. Peer-to-Peer distribution alleviates this problem, but often P2P has, in the past, been frowned upon due to associations with piracy. And of course, P2P has the possibility of distributing software that's not valid, depending on what kind of cryptographic signatures are used.

Of course, that's valid for direct downloads, too, but with direct, you have one primary point of failure (ignoring the routers in between server and client), and with P2P, every peer (with their routers in between peers, etc.) could be a point of failure. What's needed is an effective way to distribute without the incentive to make money off of the distribution.

I'm not sure how that can be developed. The temptation to profit via actions relating to crap-ware seems all too appealing. Statistically, you have some guarantee that some people will never look into the details and install the crapware, of which some of people will possibly use that crapware, not knowing any better. This information gleaned clearly would have some market value. In the past I would have advocated some sort of micropayment system (by this I mean payments much smaller than one cent), but I think those systems have been tried in the past with little success. That may only mean those systems had some quality to them that may have guaranteed failure, but it could mean that the micropayment concept itself is problematic due to the way transactions must be processed as defined. I'm not so sure that some form of micropayments could work if the overhead could be minimized and if payments, which need not need to be money based, only needed to be approximate.

But this is so far out of my realm of knowledge that I hesitate to guess what would and would not work besides what I've already stated. I am VERY annoyed by these dark patterns.

No website knows 'no' anymore. No means no does not apply to the web? Do you want to (do something bad for you good for the website) YES! Later Or pages begging for donations: - i already donated - i want to donate - not now WHAT. When i want to donate, i do so. Maybe you can ask me once, but please not per overlay 'popup'. And not on each article again.

And if i do not want, do not show the content, or leave me alone with your crappy begging. You should NEVER use Download.com, which is notorious for this kind of thing, and has been for ages. However, there is usually a simple solution: you can download more than 16,000 apps from Note that you do not need to use AllMyApps' installer.

You can go to the program you want and download it directly. However, the AllMyApps program will notify you of new versions and install them if you want. Personally, I prefer Secunia's PSI for this, and it's a good way to get your relatives' Windows software updated without them noticing. As it happens, the Athtek Skype Recorder isn't on AllMyApps but it's a paid-for program: the free download is a trial version. Sorry this is very very old news Scott. This stuff has been aroung since the AOL days. Where have you been?

People have been fighting this crap for 15 years were have you been. Its all the same thing once the had all the options already clicked then they changed it so ya have to click decline you have to READ before clicking anything on thses downloads. Whats really Bad Is our Government doesn't seem to think this needs to be fixed. That Fooling people into downloading and installing software is ok business pratice. Why think other wise no laws have been passed to stop the trickery. So i really don't know why you wrote this article you clearly are not current on whats happening on the internet or computer software. We all have been victims of this fraud, my Nokia Lumia came installed with some third party applications which I don't want.

Someone talked about Nexus being clean, sorry dude, my Nexus 7 (2012) came with many apps pre-installed, Pinyin input, Play Books, Play Music, Play Newsstand, Hangouts, HP Print Service Plugins etc.) Last time I shared my laptop with my wife, nightmare started for me, some extension/app installed itself on all browsers(An obscure website will open up when you open new tab), when you go to disable it, you see that the disable button is disabled! Had to uninstall some app, make some registry key changes, I am still not sure its all gone. All of us are angry about this, any ways to punish these offenders? In UX circles, the name for stuff like this is a 'Dark Pattern,' a UI or interface that's designed to trick people into making a selection that's against their best interest.

It almost has some tie back to money, and in design meetings is usually done to try and squeeze that little bit of revenue out of people that don't know better. The worst part is that there are so many otherwise decent companies that get caught up in it, and in the end, this stuff is no different from spam tactics, burying small charges on credit cards or phone bills, or tacking on unwanted or unneeded services to a purchase (like those 'extended' warranties that are basically just throwing away money). A good non-internet example that I know of is from a telecommunications company that my wife worked for years ago whose name rhymed with 'Q'west' (and is now a part of CenturyLink). She worked in what is laughably called customer service (and was really just sales), and they were trained to sell to customers that called in with problems on the bill. The bills were purposefully made hard to understand, information was intentionally hidden, and mistakes were added to bills to force them to call in and ask for help (and get harassed to purchase more bad services).

The sad thing is that behavior like that, which in most circles would be illegal, is perfectly allowed in today's world. It's what permits toolbar installers, or what has ruined formerly good brands like Download.com (it could also be that CNET is just the touch of death for good ideas). @Pete (waaaay up there;) ) 'Not sure we'd want to own the whole transaction and install, as that would require people really checking the software to make sure it's not going to do anything funky (something which happens automatically for apps that target WinRT APIs)' Well of course you wouldn't.want. to. You think Apple wanted to have a human review every app in their App Store?

The idea would seem completely ridiculous, until Apple actually did it. It's something you.have. to do if you want to really have a trustworthy app store. You'd obviously want to wrap the Win32 App Store apps in something like sandboxie.

But it could be done. And it would be worth the effort. I'd go as far as to classify Dark UI Patterns as Predatory practices. There are very few situations in which I think it is morally permissible for humans to prey on other humans. Our civilization derives no benefit from predators, and no person should be free to prey on another person, excepting circumstances where the prey is in turn a predator.

Governments protect citizens from certain subclasses of predators, and an argument can be made for reclassifying additional predatory practices, including Dark UI Patterns, as criminal activities. In defense of our mutual employer, Bing Bar only seems to come from Windows Update which no seems to do. I'm sorry, this was meant to be a defense. Forget I said anything.

As for the often repeated request to have desktop apps actually install from the Store, I agree that would be great. The challenge of course is in testing and validating those applications. App Stores are part of the solution, but it isn't an App Store alone.

Another important feature of modern Store solutions is Sandboxing. Desktop applications can include everything from.NET to Win32 to Assembly and operate at a much lower level than App Store packages. The breadth of runtimes, languages, frameworks and APIs available makes replicating the Store experience on the desktop quite difficult. I'm a well known Windows Installer expert / evangelist (17 years coding, blogging for 10 years, 5000 posts on InstallShield forum and top contributor on all the related StackOverflow tags ). I've always refused to participate in this crap. I used to have a pretty good relationship with Flexera Software (InstallShield) but I slammed them publically for joining forces with Yahoo!

Six years ago to create a feature in their product to allow all of their users creating MSI's to embed the Yahoo! Toolbar and try to monetize their customers (product) that way. FWIW, yes, there always is a meeting.

Problem is I'm guessing that 99% of the people leaving comments on this blog don't want to write installers unless forced to. This means it's the junior developer or some off shore resource who gets tasked to do this crap and he either doesn't care or doesn't know to say.NO. At least my family members are trained to click the little X in the corner when they see an unfamiliar dialog pop up.

When it persists and reopens they know to ignore the Window close windows itself and force close running programs. If it then persists after reboot -call me. Combined with the restricted accounts I set them up with. (yes I tell them no support if they get a 'home' version of windows) My life is now very care free. Computers that used to sport every crapware you could think of within months have now been crap free for over a year. But the message of the blog is not that this is impossible, but it should not be necessary. Download.com is in all their hosts files btw set to 127.0.0.1.

It strikes me that as developers with a conscience, we should be able to do something about this. For example, the is making headway on exposing & squashing patents that shouldn't be approved (e.g.: ). Surely there must be ways we can help the ordinary person.

For example, couldn't we make a user-friendly version of Fiddler that helps users see what apps are spewing into the Ethernet? It could identify the offending program and when it is launched/activated (Startup or opening your browser, for example). Or maybe we could make a NuGet-like program that people could use, or a website that is better than Download.com and beat it into submission, like StackOverflow did to Experts Exchange. I know these ideas aren't fleshed out in any way, and they won't be simple. But, just maybe, there is an idea floating among your readers as to how we can help.

Great article. No idea why companies like Oracle are 'allowed' to spread malware while others are persecuted for it. I know someone that accidentally installed the Ask toolbar while installing Java, and, not only did it completely hijack their browser settings, it didn't even appear in the Control Panel to let him uninstall. It's criminal, it really is, and I'm tired of all these large corporations somehow getting away with it. It's time Oracle, and others, got called out as spreaders of malicious malware.

Instead, all the focus in the media is spent giving the term 'hackers' a bad name, diverting attention from the real spammers who are funding their broadcasts. I've faced the removal of Conduit Search (Search Conduit??) several times recently, always on non-technical peoples' computers. Each time it's taken me at least full half-hour of deleting and re-booting to get rid of it.

It makes me wonder,'Where does this come from? Who is behind Search Conduit and are they semi-legit, or pure evil?' If you google Search Conduit or Conduit Search you get literally thousands of 'How to remove' sites. The company's own website doesn't appear until the third page.

Finally, up comes www.conduit.com buried amongst all the other sites which tell you how to get rid of them in nine easy steps. Their own site proclaims that they 'Engage People', which they seem to interpret as tricking them into installing software they don't know about and wouldn't want if they did. They're moving into the smartphone business too.

Wikipedia states that they are a $1.3billion Israeli company having over 400 employees. JPMorgan-Chase invested 100 million in them and owns 7%. Big business funding malware that it seems like EVERYONE wants to remove if they only knew how. An apparently successful, billion dollar business model based on stealing clicks from Google.

Mainstream malware. Is this unusual? What's the world coming to? Great post, I agree with everything said. Another 'dark pattern' is the frequency that apps carrying this rubbish in their installers have 'updates'. Big name companies such as Adobe, Oracle (as noted by others) to name a couple who should know better. So I always set either 'notify but don't install' or 'only update when I want to' options so that when I do decide to install an update, I do it when I can give it my full attention so that I don't accidentally agree to anything.

It's so sad that the Internet has degenerated to the point where everyone is seen as a potential mugging victim every time they go online (or even when they reboot their computer). It's not right that you need to be a hardened IT professional to be safe online these days, ordinary users just don't stand a chance any more. They're just Lambs to the slaughter, and the people behind these installers / phishing emails etc etc know it. I've hit all of these problems before and been horribly offended by them.

Seeing them all summarized on one page (thank you) filled me with the white-hot rage of somebody who just spent an entire weekend cleaning up my parents' computers. Conduit and many other companies need to find a way to make money that involves.adding. value instead of.subtracting. value. Microsoft and Oracle should be ashamed of themselves for participating in this marketplace of deception. The Bing Desktop/Toolbar are evil (less evil, but still evil) because Windows Update should be reserved for, well, updates. These software installs piggyback on the fears of well intentioned users who want to be as safe as possible by installing all optional updates.

Seems to me like all they did was take a common smarmy business software practice and automate it. For anyone who hasn't had to deal with that, it goes like this: Me: 'Oh, look, XYZ corp has a business application I might want to use, and they offer a free trial!' -fills out a web form that has a shocking resemblance to a credit app- -clicks Next, sees Download button, about to click it- RING RING. I just had the same shit from SourceForge when I tried to install FileZilla FTP server today. I know they have to make money somehow, and they must surely be hurting over their loss to GitHub, but taking someone's open source code and open source installer and then wrapping it in your own crap was just wrong wrong wrong. And then of course, people blame Windows even when the same stuff could be done on Linux or a Mac. An overlapping group of people then complain when MS attempts to do a bit of a walled garden.

A happy medium would be side-loaded 'modern' apps where you can restrict what they can and can't do rather than giving them access to your entire user account token. Today wanted to download a widely-recommended program to convert a VMWare virtual hard drive to VHD. A quick Google search led me to the company's website which required me to register to the site to download, so I thought I would look around to see if I could get it without registering. Back arrow to Google results.Third link down was a Tucows link. They've always been good guys!

Let's get it from them! Anyway, the user experience to download was almost identical to Scott's, expect there isn't a tiny 'direct download' link on the Tucows page; you have to use their download software and opt-out of all of the junk.

The Tucows download software looked very, very similar to the download.com software that Scott screenshotted above. It must be made by the same company. Never again, Tucows. I had downloads to downloaders. Web Platform installer, adobe flash, java etc. They advertise (size 150kb) or something and in the back of your mind you are thinking IIS + media wiki, + drupal + okay how big is this really going to be? I have a 250Mbps internet connection I don't need a download to 'manage' my download: that is what OS/browser build in tools are for.

To add insult to injury most of them don't offer any pause/resume functionality so they are just duplicating what you get from the browser for free. Also a couple years ago, it hasn't happened lately (companies got better behaved? I doubt it): I remember downloading free software of some sort (torrent client, Firefox something like that) that I could have sworn I remembered to untick each of the install a browser addon, install an antivirus tool etc.

After installation my homepage was changed to some third party, I had a browser plugin and the stupid AV was installed. I removed all and thinking okay must have been my mistake I must have missed one of the opt outs. So I repeated again and the same thing happens. I get that these are ad supported programs but how many times is reasonable to ask someone if they want to install something else along with your app?

The Google plugin for whatever reason seems to be one that they particularly want to cram down your throat. I am a software professional and well aware of the risks. Nevertheless I am human and make mistakes like all other people. Just today I wanted to install Firefox and by mistake ended up using the cnet installer. I caught it just a minute too late. To be safe I used system restore to hopefully rid the machine of the garbage cnet put on.

My objection is that this behavior is both wrong and wrongheaded. It is wrong because they are being underhanded and tricking people. This should be illegal and criminal with both jail time and massive fines for any site that does it. It is wrongheaded because I will be sure to not use the site that does this; the software that they tried to install and will be a resentful of those who tried it for years.

It will drive away customers for a short term illusory gain. It is like a merchant taking your twenty dollar bill. Then claiming you only gave them a ten dollar bill. It is cheap; it is underhanded and it is sleezy. For a company from Oracle to Cnet to do this it says more about their management.

It shows they are not people I want to do business with. Sure I may have no choice in case of Java. However I would remember that if I ever wanted to chose a database. Why should I do business with a company whose top management are scum?