How many toolbars do you want? Enough With the Browser Toolbars Already!
There’s a discussion going on at Calendar of Updates forum regarding an article on “How many toolbars do you want?”
Most participants in the discussion has one voice on “No to toolbars!” or not trusting all toolbars.
Everyone there made interesting points and I, myself hate toolbars especially if the ingredients include Ask.com search service. Also, as I said in the said discussion… there’s so much for users to agree already:
1. EULA of the program e.g. Comodo Firewall Pro, Spy Sweeper by Webroot, ZoneAlarm by ZoneLabs/Check Point, Norton 360 Beta by Symantec and so on
2. EULA of the search service e.g. Ask, Yahoo
3. EULA of the toolbar developer (whoever did it – Ask, Symantec, Comodo Firewall Pro etc)
Larry said in his new article “Enough With the Browser Toolbars Already!” BTW, Larry is of course very aware that Ask is a suspect. We don’t like a suspect to be roaming around our playground :)
Alex of Sunbelt knows it’s going to be a debate again. Note the status of Ask.com is “questionable” status ever since. Many vendors will detect it last time and there are still few that continue to detect it as spyware or unwanted program.
We have “Products with Ask Toolbar” and “Installers Hall of Shame (Unwanted Add-on)” topics in CoU and really upset many of us to see the number of vendors who is misleading their customers that the “Toolbar” has been added to help them protect while they browse the world wide web.
BTW, this desktop is now Norton Free. I don’t want to support any product that will not listen to its customers. Norton Safe Web plug-in is fine but a big NO to search service, Safe Search that they developed together with their new business partner, Ask.com. Not to toolbar that was developed to give way to a search service like Ask.com.
I have Comodo Firewall Pro before but when Ask.com came into their business, I removed and put back Outpost Firewall Pro (that time, Outpost 4 was just released and the bugs are not fully fixed yet and lucky me, when it’s to dump Comodo due to its partnership with Ask… Outpost bugs are gone, at least on my machine)
My laptop will soon become Norton Free and that will be tonight! If that deal is gone or if they will stop that non-sense deal (the product is still in beta so let’s hope they will stop this before it goes final).. only then Norton and its updates will find their way to CoU again.
It’s your choice vendors especially SECURITY vendors. It’s the users choice and also, right to choose what product to use and support.