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"Contest" - The most difficult Opt Out screens on installs!?
TaoPhoenix:
Great points Vlastimil, and I'll even speculate that CNet "grabs" versions all by itself and packages them without a developer even knowing! (No proof, just guessing.)
I do think I have seen CNet often outranking the original sites because CNet has lots of tasty Backlinks, and the original site might not be optimized at all, and just be a "lonely page".
bit:
...
TaoPhoenix:
Yes my question was serious, and now I just found this:
How to Remove Babylon Search Toolbar
It seems CNET has been offering downloads that include being infected with the 'PUP' or 'Potentially Unwanted Program' a.k.a. 'Babylon Search Toolbar'.
It seems CNET is an 'ennabler' in infecting computer OSs with the 'Babylon Search Toolbar', which exhibits many traits of a virus:
"It's technically not a virus, but it does exhibit plenty of malicious traits, such as rootkit capabilities to hook deep into the operating system, browser hijacking, and in general just interfering with the user experience..."
Rootkit...??
Yes, I actually believed -up until now- that TUCOWS, softonic, and CNET were all "developers' darlings"; sites where you could get 'safe' downloads of really cool neat stuff.
Not any more, and my sincere thanks to the contributors to this thread.
-bit (May 03, 2013, 02:33 PM)
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That's bad news, because no matter how sneaky the downloads are, per the "rule" of my initial thread they were supposed to be clean if you ever managed to get through the "DoubleDare Physical Challenges"!
:)
But I think I recall a Babylon Toolbar showing up, and I had no idea where it came from, so if it's mashed into supposedly safe programs that's not good!
bit:
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TaoPhoenix:
^I run multiple normally unplugged separate hard drives with backup copies of my OS.
I'm not sure if it would deal with a Rootkit, as I understand those can actually infect the mobo, or am I mistaken?
Rootkits are about as unethical and nasty as you can get.
Maybe someone should write a 'Babylon remove & restore tool'.
Or something 'resident' to protect against it.
-bit (May 03, 2013, 02:47 PM)
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I'm not aware of very much software that can go all the way to hardware!
Well, as for the "resident to protect" thing it's kinda also my whole thread point, it's amazing all that stuff gets on there even if you miss an opt-out button.
Mark Russinovich had a Rootkit detector, but I haven't run it in a while. One of these days when I do another whole day of Comp maintenance I might.
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