Redirect of Browsers

Woke up this morning and stumbled down to my office to check my emails and I found that "something" had done an auto update and reboot and given me the lovely spigot redirect. The something turns out to be IO SmartDefrag. Which does not seem to have anywhere in the settings for me to tell it NOT to do auto updates so I will be uninstalling it because I do not have a couple of hours to take care of this spigot redirect every time SmartDefrag decides to do an update AND doesn't give me a choice to NOT install that crappy tool bar.

I have had this before so my issue is not HOW to get rid of it but HOW to keep it from happening. I read one particular thread that really resonates with me. In this thread "WishIKnewMore" and "ChasLang" discuss why Majorgeeks is allowing this nuisance toolbar to be an option when downloading freeware and truly I get it but as "WishIKnewMore" said "it is a brand killer and trust destroyer".

I will now have to think twice before advising people to use Majorgeeks to download software, this is not a threat just a fact since some of the people in my life are more computer savvy than others and I do not have hours to spend cleaning this mess off of their computers which I would feel compelled to do since it happened due to my recommendation.

I will not pretend to even begin to know how a great site that has been so helpful to so many of us continues to cover operating expenses in an ever changing computing world. I do get that a lot of this is probably not even a decision Majorgeeks let alone the volunteer techs, even gets to make in regard to these toolbar add-ons. I am sure that most of you who are the wizards who help us out have got to be extremely tired of sorting this problem out. Doing a search this morning on this issue yielded dozens of hits,which is dozens of people looking for help with what must be getting to be a very boring issue.

I would just ask that if you are getting tired of hearing about us complain about the redirection of our browsers that maybe if you were vocal about it to the powers that be it would go away. I know and there is a land of rainbows pots of gold and unicorns......

Below is a part of the conversation that I mentioned in the beginning of this thread. Cheers, Brenda


"Re: Yahoo/Spigot Hijaked My Computer - Help Please
Quote:
Originally Posted by WishIKnewMore View Post
Whatever the spigot junkware is labeled in the computer world, in the consumer world, it is a brand killer and trust destroyer.
I can understand you view point.

Quote:
Originally Posted by WishIKnewMore View Post
What bothers me more is next time I come to MajorGeeks and want to download something, I'm now going to have this experience as a filter. Not quite the trust level that was present before.

You have to remember that you are the one who did not read the popup information and that you agreed to install it when you just clicked continue without reading. You can easily bypass this being installed by declining it. It is no different than many hundreds of other applications. You did not object to all the addons that Adobe added to your PC. You don't need them either. Same applies to the Chrome and Apple startups/services that are not necessary.

Even Sun Java will install Google Toolbar unless you decline it. Avira and many other antivirus programs ( including the PAID version of Symantec ) make you install Ask Toolbar with no choice not to install it.

It is the way the free software and now even some commercial progams have gone to cut costs. If you don't like this then you will have to avoid using any free software from now on and pay for everything you use. In addition you still need to make sure you read before clicking as noted in the link I previously gave you to >> How to Protect yourself from malware!
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Like I said I do understand why it is being done but what you failed to understand was there was NO POP UP! I went to bed and left my computer on with Firefox open and 10 windows open plus 7 Excel files I was working on. I cam back this morning and Firefox AND Excel had been closed, my machine rebooted and IO Smart Defrag updates AND Spigot Yahoo redirect installed.

It is one thing if I ignore the warnings but a completely other thing when a piece of software does it's own upgrade and installs something I do not want. That is the issue I would like addressed.

 

Thanks for getting back to me. I had done exactly what you did when I installed the program many months ago and everything was running fine.

It all went south last night while I was asleep. Like I said before my browser and all running programs had been closed and the computer rebooted. I do know that Windows Updates will do this so I wasn't too worried until I started Firefox and got the spigot redirect.

I had to look at all of my program files to see which one had done the update, I looked by date and time and it turned out IO Smart Defrag file dates had changed to be the wee hours of this morning so I figured that software had to be the culprit.

I launched Smart Defrag and went into settings but I couldn't find any way to tell the software to not do updates automatically. Funny enough I had unchecked the launch at start up, I always check that because I can not stand have a slow computer at start up or reboot. I feel the same way I will run a program when I want the program to run not when the program thinks it should run!

In the past I have absent mindlessly install software and not read everything and wound up with a toolbar or some other piece of junk that I didn't want but I was sound asleep, dead to the world when this happened. I have uninstalled Smart Defrag and will check to make sure I don't have any other IOBit software.