Nch Software

[kartal]

You know they have some good free software, but their consistent sneaky practices do not make their intention of letting people use their free apps any better. Here is a my quote from another topic.

"I so hate those guys and their practices so much. They are so sneaky. When you install one app they install all those shortcuts. I am also feeling like they are snooping on people`s Thunderbird or Outlook email accounts. I cannot be sure but I have seen couple situations where I felt like how the hell they got my email adress. Me never puts any of my real email adress, not even on  legitimate purchases."

If you know what they are up to, or have some good examples of bad behaviours from them please write it down here so that people know who they are dealing with.

http://www.nchsoftware.com

Lets expose them

[4wd]

I've only used their WavePad Audio Editor, (IIRC, they had a free version but I can't seem to find it - maybe it's the default if you don't purchase), so my experience is limited to:

1) Installed it, saying No to any optional extras.
2) It installed a load of extra shortcuts for their software - that's OK, it put them all under one menu item, not spread all over the place.
3) Copy WavePad Audio Editor executable elsewhere and uninstall it - it works fine as a portable app, (even though I don't use it anymore).

I've never received any email from them in over 12+ months.

Anyway, not what you probably want to hear but just my limited dealings with them.

[sajman99]

NCH Software's hard marketing strategy and online installation methods make me think "adware" instead of "freeware". Anyway, it was certainly annoying-ware to me.

When I tried their VideoPad some while back (probably 6-8 months ago), without permission the shell extension "convert to" was placed in the registry for several file types such as .jpg, .avi, .mpg, etc. As you mentioned, the shortcuts to all their software placed in the Start Menu is annoying as well.

Not the end of the world, but they could have at least asked before taking over. I honestly don't know if there's more to it than aggressive marketing, but I promptly uninstalled--didn't have the patience for it. All I know is they didn't pass the good old "sniff test"--something smelled bad to me but I couldn't say exactly "what they were up to".

[kartal]

4wd

I have not gotten email from them either. But the thing was that one of the apps installed itself as trial(maybe I have downloaded the trial version accidentally), It was the invoice one. At the end of the trial it would open the webpage with my real email adress put in the contacts section of the upgrade page. And sometimes you know web sites would have urls with the contacts or context name, some kind of php thing, my email adress was in the url bar as well which is something that can be parsed from their web server logs. So it was  not a simple ohh lets open a webpage everytime the app starts. This has happened to me multiple times.  So either it was snooping on the the local email accounts, or it was using the contact information that was put in the software. But in anycase that is a breach of privacy to me. Whatever I put in a local application belongs to me and not meant to be scooped out like that. What they did was a sneaky way of gathering that personal information out of my computer.  

[Crush]

I sometimes use the free Debut Videocapture without any restrictions (I believe so), nagscreens or E-Mails. Perhaps other progs aren´t like this.