What's a Dealio toolbar?

This morning, when I was checking emails and forums while having breakfast, there was no weird toolbar on my computer, I'm positive of this. I pay attention to my PC and I would have noticed a weird toolbar.

Then I came home from work and booted the PC back up again this evening, and there is a glaringly ugly Dealio toolbar in my Firefox. I have not installed it and The Guy never uses that computer, so he didn't do it either. I did a quick search of the malware forum and found out that it's not actually "real" malware, it's just irritating, so I uninstalled it via Add/Remove and now I'm running MBAM on that computer just on general principle.

I am curious though: What is Dealio, and why is their toolbar on my computer? :confused Google wasn't very helpful...

 

apparently it's related to shopping

http://www.fbmsoftware.com/spyware-net/Application/Dealio_Toolbar/

 

Aha! Thanks, now I know what it is.

It left some registry entries when I uninstalled it with Add/Remove Programs, but CCleaner took care of that. I'm just confused about where it came from, since I normally pay very close attention to what I agree to before clicking "next" or "install"... I must have slipped up and been careless this time.

Hm. Now I feel kind of glad it wasn't anything worse than a shopping toolbar...

 

better to be a little paranoid then to leave it unnoticed

 

Oh yes, absolutely... though I am starting to get a bit worried about this PC. It had some malware issues a couple of months ago as well. I'm starting to wonder if I need to do something drastic to it...

 

well i'm sure you already know this, but maintenance is always neccessary

 

I know, and I do it regularly. That's why I'm worried.

I might do something drastic next weekend. Switch out the AV and real-time spyware protectors, and see if they find anything. I got a new firewall yesterday and ditched the old one.

 

Hey mimsy, what new firewall did you switch to?

As some app's [even well liked and respected ones] like to add a toolbar or two when you install, Comodo and Ccleaner are the first off hand but ther are many many more.

Although the Dealio toolbar is exceptionally cr@p, on par with zango in my book, so i would swerve anyone associating/promoting with it!


Q

 

New firewall: PC Tools. I like it so far, it's very talkative and gives me lots of info on what's going on, and what the processes and applications are doing behind the scenes. I like that.

I haven't opened any attachments to emails, actually no files from any weird sources at all, either sent to me over email or messenger. I didn't install any new applications in the 24 hours before the Dealio toolbar showed up, and didn't do anything on the computer I haven't done before without strange things happening. I may try to retrace my steps at some point and see where it came from but for right now, since MBAM came up clean, I will keep an eye on things and aside from that leave it alone.

 

Hey Mimsy, look into any app's that have updated themselves recently.

From what i can see Dealio seems to be connected to a few Media Burning app's (CD burner easy, for one) so look into those first.

And when you find the culprit... bin it!

Any app' that will install a toolbar without clearly giving you a choice is one that should be avoided IMO.


Q

 

Check your plugins in FF; I'm seeing that there is a Dealio plugin.
Addons, we control; plugins are, unfortunately, out of our control.

I'll try a search to see how a Dealio plugin gets installed.

Were you doing any Cyber Monday shopping?
http://www.prweb.com/releases/cyber/monday/prweb3274404.htm

 

No Cyber monday shopping at all. No Dealio plugin in Firefox either. Hm...

EventViewer says Dealio was installed using Msinstaller on 7:07 AM Monday 7th, initiated by user Mimsy. That would mean I did it with the Windows installer, right? Or at least it was done in my account... I don't remember installing any software on Monday morning, but Digitallocksmith mentioned it can self-install when a file is opened. That would suck. After some serious in-depth googling, it seems that the toolbar itself is harmless enough, but can be used by other more damaging malware as an entry point. (I found this thread in the google hits, btw. That amused me. LOL)

Regardless of how it got there, it is now gone, and I have done full sweeps with Spybot, CCleaner, Malwarebytes, and Avira. None of them found anything, so for now I think I'm good. I will do another full sweep in a couple of days to make sure.

 

I had looked at a few threads about Dealio and it is from Vendio Services. One of the threads had a post by a self-declared executive from Vendio who stated that they never attempt to install on someone's computer without consent and have easy to follow uninstall instructions on their website if Add/Remove programs doesn't work.

There were other posters who swore they had not installed the toolbar and like you were aware that some programs bundle it into their own installers. I tend to believe that there is someone out there who is putting the program out there in a sneaky way. The posts I was reading went back at least a year so I think it is business as usual for Vendio.

The toolbar itself doesn't appear to be malicious just a money making advertising type thing.

 

That's the general idea I've come to as well... and I'm glad turned out to be a relatively harmless thing.

I am very irritated that it installed itself without my knowledge though. I'm rabidly against that kind of thing, on general principle.

 

LOL, a Dealio toolbar supplied by the Vendio company. How could anyone ever make the connection?rolleyes That's just too funny! :-D

Sad thing is if Mimsy caught the stupid thing then anyone of us can do the same. OK, this one seems to be benign and I know Mimsy has good protection and good surfing habits.

 

Why thank you

I recently joined a comics web community... but the Dealio showed up several days after that. I'm really quite puzzled about where this came from.