Spyware is everyware

After 15 hours of research, some downloading, scanning, re-scanning, more research, more downloading and a bit more research, I finally have a handle on my spyware/trojan/hijacker problem. But I never expected the problem to be so prevelant...

Yesterday I downloaded a really cool shareware to make your desktop 3D-it's called 3DNA. I got it right here at trustworthy old majorgeeks. It has an icon proclaiming it "HOT" and it has been downloaded almost 21,000 times. But look what I found in the licence agreement....

MyWay is a known browser hijacker,

[URL=http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/MySearch.html]http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/MySearch.html[/URL]

If they can even infiltrate majorgeeks what chance do we have?

If there is one thing I have learned in the last few days it is to always scan licence agreements... Even here.

 

I will notify the owners.

 

Very well.

 

No apologies necessary. You provide so many cool resources for free that you have plenty of positive karma in the bank to cover a couple of oversights. Besides myway is about the wimpiest parasite I have ever seen, it even has an uninstall option, and I never did install it because I read the license agreement. Lesson learned-vicariously for others too I hope. (Which led me to wonder; could somebody write some code to scan the license agreement for you? You know, look for parasite agreement-type language or common parasite names like myway? Then you could avoid installing programs that have explicit parasite disclosure in the license agreement. Since I'm not even sure if "write some code" is the correct terminology it should be quite apparent that this is out of my skill-set. Anyone out there capable? Should I start a new thread about this?)

Oh, and thanks for the T-shirt. I shall wear it proudly... Around the house.