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What the hell is OpenCandy?

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Renegade:
Well, no offers of other software came up and Photo Resizer installed and works.
Searching for opencandy or OCSetupHlp.dll came up with no results.
-cmpm (March 29, 2011, 07:40 PM)
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Not for offers of other software.  From looking at the agreement, they have the same concept as other advertisers, i.e. impressions and click through.  I wasn't saying that it was to get more offers, but to track impressions.  Did it say what the request was?  That (other than asking) would seem to be the way to figure out what it was trying to do...
-wraith808 (March 30, 2011, 08:53 AM)
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The offers are from Microsoft, Uniblue and a bunch of other big names. The software isn't just junk. There are some shopping things offered, but I looked at them, and they're actually pretty good. I was pleasantly surprised.

Renegade:
In any event, it's "off to a start":

http://cynic.me/2011/03/31/off-to-a-start/

Not much, but it will pick up. It's only been 1 day since I released the publicly, so we'll see.

wraith808:
For what it's worth, Nod32 blocked 2 internet connections to OpenCandy when installing the latest Photo Resizer with OC.
Stopping the install of OCSetupHlp.dll and any other programs being offered.

Photo Resizer did install even with nod blocking the connection to OC.

Just for your info...
-cmpm (March 29, 2011, 07:21 PM)
--- End quote ---

Thanks for that.

This is really a problem. AV vendors should be focusing on developing technologies that prevent the real bad guys and not this kind of silliness.

You'd think that it would be easy to make a dime... Literally. :(
-Renegade (March 30, 2011, 11:09 AM)
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(Playing both sides of the fence :))

The problem arises in determining who the bad guys are.  It doesn't seem as if OC is bad, but a lot of the bad guys didn't seem so in the beginning either.  Communication is communication, and some people are paranoid about *anything* communicating that they don't know about.

But then again, if this is to meter impressions and click through, then does that act of metering have to be explicitly OK'd?  And if so, does that break the system?  Maybe on the OC disclaimer, they should state that it connects to the internet to track views- but then again, are we to the point where that is necessary?

cmpm:
here's the shots

wraith808:
Looking at the signatures and comparing it to renegade's shot, I'd surmise (though might be wrong) that it seems like the first one is to get offers, and the second one is to track # of installs of the product.  It gives some interesting heuristics on the client page, and those would require this sort of non-identifying information.

Thinking about it more, IMO the problem arises when identifying or intrusive information is culled and sent.  However, there seems to be a problem on the other (AV) side also- I truly doubt that they are investigating the content of these transmissions.  So they give a negative message based on less than full facts- security by FUD?

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