CNET Injecting Malware into Downloads

Press release from the CNET few minutes ago:<p>A note from Sean Download.com Developer Community,<p>My last communication to you was shortly after we launched the Download.com Installer in late summer. At that time I asked for patience as we began work to deliver a mutually beneficial model to market.<p>We are on the verge of fulfilling our vision of coming to market with an installer model that delivers files faster and more efficiently to users, while enabling developers to a) opt-in to the Installer, b) influence the offers tied to their files, c) gain reporting insight into the download funnel, and d) share in the revenue generated by the installer. However, due to some press that surfaced yesterday and the potential for subsequent misinformation, I am reaching out now to address that press and to provide a progress report on the upcoming launch:<p>First, on the press that surfaced yesterday: a developer expressed anger and frustration about our current model and how his file was being bundled. This was a mistake on our part and we apologize to the developer and user communities for the unrest it caused. As a rule, we do not bundle open source software and in addition to taking this developers file out of the installer flow, we have gone in and re-checked all open source files in our catalog. We take feedback from our developer &#38; user communities very seriously and take pains to both act on it and respond in a timely manner.<p>With that, I want to share progress made thus far: This week we will launch the alpha phase of our new installer. This alpha phase is intended to test the tech and do QA, and will roll through the next few weeks to ensure that our installer is bug free. Between this week and the end of January we will be completing the necessary engineering and administrative work to roll out our beta, which will include a small group of developers who've agreed to participate in the beta launch. Our goal is to exit beta by end of February and have the necessary systems in place to enable opt-in, influence over advertising offers (for those offers that impact your product), download funnel reporting and revenue share back to you, the developers. In the weeks/months following the full release, we will continue to iterate on the model, adding more features to the Installer and bringing greater efficiency to our own download funnel (read: increased install conversion). The initial feedback from developers on our new model has been very positive and we are excited to bring this to the broader community as soon as possible. More communication will follow as we move into Q1, and until then, thank you for continuing to work with Download.com.<p>Sincerely,<p>-- Sean

I remember back in 2006 when the Download.com logo had "Safe, Trusted, and Spyware-Free" under it.<p>EDIT: Picture. <a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/original/0000/5821/5821v1.png" rel="nofollow">http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/original/0000/5821/5...</a>

When it comes for Windows software I only use 2 types, Open source software downloaded from the projects website directly or fully paid up commercial software.<p>I never install anything from ad banners

There's three things here. First, adding a toolbar and screwing with user settings is freaking lame, but everyone does it and it's something that's been an accepted way to monitize software development.<p>However, injecting that into other people's software is low, especially if the developers aren't aware of it. CNET should be ashame.<p>Lastly, the way they present it to users should be plainly criminal. There's a way to offer additional programs, and that's with a checkbox. The screenshot they show is CLEARLY meant to confuse users, whereas even I would have clicked next hadn't I seen the circled text. On this point CNET should be sued for deceptive tactics, because they put NMAP (or the name of whatever you downloaded) as the title, and present buttons that are meant to deceive, making it seem like it's NMAP's own EULA.

When my mother forwards me the latest malware scare chain letter she got frm her friends, I tell her to picture her computer as a plane flying at Mach 4, high above in the stratosphere, confident almost nothing launched from the ground can harm her.<p>That's because she doesn't use Windows.

Previous post was mentioned on HN (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3317121" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3317121</a>)

CNET was the top choice for me back 10-12 years ago whenever i wanted to download a utility / piece of freeware/shareware.<p>Of course when their market share went down... they had to change their business-model...This is just the next step after bloating their pages with ads.<p>I'm guessing that not the same people are in charge as those who were in their glory days:_)

What good alternatives would people suggest? What should be the "goto" site we could suggest to a novice for finding a clean copy of almost any software...any suggestions? (Assuming that an expert user would straight to the source website)

It's funny seeing this posted so soon after "Don't be a Free User"...

CNET was a very tested brand in its day.

"This is probably why CNET switch to installing the Babylon Toolbar yesterday. This is a good and welcome move by Microsoft, but the whole process of paying “distribution partners“ to changer user's home page to MSN and search engine to Bing is rather sketchy"<p>I am puzzled by the reaction of some journalists and people here. Have you actually thought why the toolbar is marked as malware? Usually, that's because one guy in one of the AV companies installed the toolbar, didn't like it and so put a flag on. Malware as a definition is something that does harm to your computer. We could argue whether this is actually the case as most of the toolbars, including StartNow just provide search functionality and homepage reset - this is how they make money - there is no reason to do anything sketchy on top of that.<p>I am not trying to defend toolbar companies here but the quote above that its actually a good thing to replace StartNow with Babylon is misinforming the public. These toolbars all do the same thing and they should either be marked all by AV companies or not. Of course its never gonna happen because there are some AV companies that won't flag toolbars because hey - they distribute toolbars too!