Aside from when I need Photoshop, I've been using my Chromebook 80% of the time & loving it but over the last year, I've had 3-4 family members and friends ask me to help them remove toolbars/search helpers and other shit they downloaded by mistake while installing a legit piece of software on a Windows box.<p>The industry should have evolved beyond this practice by now. I'm sure there's a less invasive profit center.<p>This practice specifically preys on the less tech savvy. Not cool... It seems like reputable companies would distance themselves from the practice but some of the most popular software still tries to get you to opt-in via a strategically placed checkboxes or misleading question. It's time for us to stop accepting this. Our parents, kids and friends deserve better.<p>Thoughts?
Strictly speaking, it's usually opt-out, i.e. the "install toolbar" option is selected by default, usually in fine print at the bottom of the installation screen, and you have to notice it and un-check it.
IMO the problem is that windows does not have a proper built-in package manager. People rely on binaries installed from possibly shady websites to install their software.<p>This would be a non issue with a proper package manager (that or a well curated "app store").<p>Installers should be a thing of the past, they hardly serve any purpose in this day and age.<p>You can't expect people to stop doing that if it makes them money. I'm pretty sure the vast majority here doesn't accept this kind of behaviour (whatever that means), but so what? We're not the target anyway.
I agree that this is a tactic that preys on the less tech savvy folks, and share your continued astonishment that reputable companies would engage in these drive-by toolbars/extensions that are bundled in installers.<p>YC has invested[0] in a company called InstallMonitizer[1] that appears to help developers and advertisers connect in the pay-per-install marketplace.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130115/17343321692/why-are-y-combinator-andreessen-horowitz-backing-drive-by-toolbaradware-installer.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130115/17343321692/why-ar...</a><p>[1] <a href="http://www.installmonetizer.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.installmonetizer.com/</a><p>Sadly it does't seem like a practice that will go away any time soon. I'd like to do some digging around on developer forums and see if any folks have shared their experience and would be able to comment on the amount of extra revenue that they see from such programs.
The worst bit of social engineering of this kind that I recently encountered was contained in the OS X installer for μTorrent. Halfway during the installation process you get a large body of text along with the buttons AGREE and DECLINE. You immediately think you're looking at a license agreement and click AGREE. Then you realize what the buttons actually said was:<p>AGREE to this offer
DECLINE this offer<p>And the offer obviously is to install some toolbar crap into your browser. Normally I'm very careful not to install any adware or toolbars, but this one caught me off guard.
Correct. I've noticed incredibly SEO optimized pages for popular free software (VLC I think). That is what people like my parents find if they google form such products. If you install from one of these pages you get a lot of crap- and adware. It wouldn't be a problem if they didn't score so high for names of free software...
Meta question for browser designers... is there any possible reason or purpose for toolbar addons other than spamming users? No? Oh, then take out the entire functionality, please. It'll be a massive net gain to humanity.<p>Since they won't, makes you wonder how much they're being paid to leave it in.
Just deliberately search in google, yahoo and bing for "download <insert popular software or game here>", find the obviously pay-per-install-crap ads, report them. (say they try to get the user to download malware, which adware is.)
When I visit my parents, I end up having to remove the Ask toolbar. It always returns due to the frequent java updates having the Ask install box ticked by default.
How could any industry evolve beyond such easy money? As long as there are users who will put up with Google/MyCoolWebSearch/ALOT/Conduit/Baylon/etcetera messing around with their settings and information these firms will never move away from these tactics.<p>If I rememeber correctly, Ccleaner was removed from Ninite due to the automatic refusal of big G's toolbar.
Yes this practice should not be acceptable, if a company does it I actively avoid them and recommend friends do the same. I think the market for this sort of thing will ever be shrinking as more and more of the technology generation grow into adults. It's a shame that normal people out in the world are completely unaware this is even happening on their systems. I often speak to people who've falled foul of this practice and they don't even know where it come from and don't seem worried that something appeared without them approving it. Most of the time they just assume that's how it's always been and they'd not noticed it before.
I tried installing something ostensibly legitimate from download.com. The "download.com installer" masked the opt-in of 3 separate craps with EULA acceptance prompts. If I was just slightly less paranoid about this stuff, I would have clicked through all of them.<p>And to be clear, they were not checkboxes, or "custom install" options. They were straight-up walls of text in tiny textareas, with only "accept" and "decline" buttons.<p>My instinct was to decline them, and they just kept coming. After I dismissed the final crap, the installer then downloaded the real installer for the app I was trying to install.
One software that I really appreciate, Freemake Video Converter, perpetrates this "scam." Personally, I prefer unchecking a box once to seeing ads on every use. But I agree it's a pretty shady tactic. I'm sure the problem will go away as tech literacy increases. Until then, so few people will be both aware and bothered by it that there will be no sudden change... just like issues in the non-tech world!