I had heard good things about the Google toolbar and went to download it. As part of the agreement, it says there are two versions–one that shows you pagedata and stuff like that and one that doesn’t. If you pick the one that does, they say it anonymously reports all the websites you go to for its rankings. Sounds kinda fishy. Is it harmless or shady?
If it reports it is spyware.
run ad-aware
install it
run ad-aware
Not hardly. Just because software sends info home to mama doesn’t make it spyware. The reporting in the Google toolbar is something that YOU have to enable. It very clearly and plainly tells you what you are enabling and why, along with what information ot reports. If you don’t want it to report anything, then just do not enable reporting. You cannot possibly do it by accident.