"AOL Software is bundled with a number of additional applications...During the installation process the user is never clearly notified that AOL will be installing these programs,"
The advisory also describes a pop-up box which appears a day after installation which forces the user to update its software without any option to close the box or decline the update.
In addition to all of the above, the AOL 9.0 software adds icons and its own toolbar to the Internet Explorer toolbar, adds items to the IE favourites menu and adds its own deskbar to the desktop taskbar.
But the best bit is that you can't even uninstall it properly ! The processes keep running even after a restart! How can a company fall into such a trap after Sony fell into this problem earlier this year and got bitch-slapped by governments around the world.
I remember when AOL used to hand out those trial CDs in the Internet's elder years and they were just as sneaky then, but this time, thankfully, the industry's listening.
3 comments:
Who are these people who use AOL anyway? I've never met anyone who even knows someone else who uses it, let alone is a subscriber themselves.
I thought that was one of the (unintentionally) funny things about the whole 'AOL leaks search histories' saga, the fact that there are actually people out there who use AOL search. Of course, they were lowest-common-denominator searchers - "Pretty much every user entered at least one web address into their search bar instead of their address bar" - but still. AOL search?!
(quote from here.)
Yeah - although apparently (by which I mean there was a story a couple of months ago that said) they're still the largest single ISP in the U.S. - but still only for grandparents or yokels
btw - trust maddy to reference a comment
wow deja vu! things keep popping back into my "new items" thing...
Something Awful put up excerpts from the AOL search logs... Hilarious, and sometimes very very disturbing what people find...
Excuse my ignorance, but isn't AOL an ISP in the states too? so your average Joe Bloggs (or does he -ahahaha bad pun) might not bother changing everything from what AOL sets up... not everyone knows what they're doing on the net, and if you see the leaked search histories you'll find it's your somewhat-below-average Joe Bloggs using the service :-)
(wow sorry long comment!)
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