Forgive me if this has been discussed, but a search didn’t turn up any topics.
Is adware a novel approach to delivering free software to the consumer while still allowing the creator some revenue, or is it a dangerous, invasive trend? For a good point / counter point visit this page: http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/geeks/0900/
My story: My first inclination was that done honestly, adware was indeed a good deal. But the internet is less like an upscale shopping park and more like open air Tijuana bazaar. Never has Caveat Emptor been more apt, and it goes double when the product has no apparent cost. I like to run a clean ship on my home PC. No icons littering the desktop, no cutsie applets, and nothing running in the background that I don’t know the purpose of. The very small number of shareware program I run normally are there because they are specialized and nothing seemed to be commercially available [at least within a reasonable price range]. What’s more, I stick to programs that have positive reviews and write-ups. So imagine my surprise after installing some seemingly useful adware, when Zone Alarm [an example of fine freeware] finds an applet I didn’t install trying to phone home. I found the program, replete with literature:
” SaveNow was downloaded onto your computer most probably as a co-bundle with other software that you downloaded from the Internet” – You mean a Trojan horse? And ‘downloaded’ is euphemism for ‘installed’ and adding a hook to force it to launch invisibly at startup.
” SaveNow is a program that gives you relevant offers… For example, if you went to a search engine and typed in “long distance”, you might get an offer for SmartPrice - a site that we found to be the best for comparing long distance plans.” – So you interfere with my internet searches and replace legitimate hits with adds.
”SaveNow is NOT spyware - there is no persistent communication between client and server” – Fucking bullshit, it was caught trying to hijack my cable modems port. ” SaveNow delivers content based on the URL visited by the user” sounds to this novice like that can only be done by monitoring my internet usage.
”polls for the presence of new browser windows every 3 seconds…takes up only slightly more RAM than your IE browser control” – It’s also a resource and bandwith hog.
Well, it’s clear I am not longer in favor of adware, as I simply don’t see people resisting the temptation to turn it into more lucrative targeted marketing. Thoughts and opinions?