This is usually an education process as many don't recognize the Adware as being a threat as it offers everything from integrated smileys in Outlook to other small conveniences, but everything is not as it seems.....HotBar is one that I have frequently run in to in the field myself...but yes folks don't want to give up those cute smileys.....and it is an effort sometimes to explain as to why those do not belong there...BD 

It would seem logical to think most Internet users are annoyed by software that causes pop-up advertisements to appear on their screens. "The most prevalent rogue security software detected in the second half of 2007 was Win32/Winfixer, with more than five times as many detections as any other single family [of potentially unwanted programs]," said Microsoft's latest Internet Security Threat Report, released on Tuesday.Once on the machine, it displays persistent warnings that the machine is infected, and the user can pay around US$39.95 to fix the machine. It is extremely difficult to remove from a machine once it has been installed. The people who profit from Winfixer have been hard to track down.  Two of those adware programs, HotBar and ZangoSearchAssistant, are produced by Zango, an adware company in Bellevue, Washington. Zango was ordered by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in November to give up $3 million in ill-gotten gains from its adware operations, which at times used deceptive means to get people to install the software.

But new statistics released by Microsoft would indicate that not all users are clamoring to uninstall adware programs, even if they're flagged as somewhat suspicious by security software.

Microsoft Figures Show Some Users May Like Adware - Yahoo! News

0 comments :

Post a Comment

 
Top
Google Analytics Alternative