Replies

@beachboybogart
All too often it even depends on where you download the Google Chrome web browser from; that is what we are talking about, correct?

Yes,and I do understand that. As a tech, I am forever installing software for testing and for customers. Anyone who is not aware of this, in my position, doesn’t deserve to be in my position.

No, these are direct-from-Google downloads. )I prefer to use their offline installer to save time and frustration, as in this area there are lots of places with very poor download speeds.) In any case, as others have pointed out, it is not a installation, per se… but it is included as a Search Engine. Every single time.

Yeah, skip all the preamble and go straight to the “uninstall/reinstall” part.

Had this happen again yesterday with a customer. Cleared all DNS and Internet settings from PC; reset modem to factory; updated WiFi driver.

Finally, as usual, uninstalled the driver completely, making sure the “delete software from PC” box was not checked. Upon reboot, the laptop reinstalled the obviously previously-broken WiFi driver software, and all is well. (Always a good idea to either back up the driver first, or download the latest from the manufacturer site, before doing the uninstall from Device Manager.)

phelps, we have to give people a little credit, right? The computer owner will know, because he/she would be the one implementing the guest account in the first place.

And yes, once a guest account with no admin privileges is set up, only an expert can fudge with it enough to cause any damage to the OS. Yes, spyware can creep in, but nothing can be installed without permission, and once the owner logs into his/her account again, anything bad is contained to the guest account. I’ve seen it countless times with people here who let their maids/gardeners/neighbours kids onto their computers. (Remember, I’m in Mexico most of the time, on Lake Chapala south of Guadalajara.)

While I would agree that including ASK as a choice would not be my preference, I don’t think it rises to the level of an “almost-criminal enterprise”. It’s only their search engine after all.

I have a far bigger bug up my… nose about Java including the ASK Search bar which is about as close as anything comes to being invasive malware as anything can be (or it used to be anyway). Then again, the Google, Yahoo, and Bing Search bars can be almost as annoying the way they sometimes just show up in a browser.

I can understand your reticence about my use of the word criminal. But let me add that I see between three and six computers, five days a week, and extras on Saturday. That’s a lot of computers, and when every installation of Chrome includes the potential for badness because of this ask.com, to me, that’s criminal. More so because the majority of Chrome users that I know (keeping in mind I live in an area that is hugely populated with retirees) did not ask for Chrome in any way that they are aware of: they got it because at the top of their browser for months and months was a yellow bar that said “Your browser is/will be out of date. Click here to upgrade.” And they did and suddenly Chrome was now their default browser. To me, that’s criminal as well. That bar did NOT say “click here to get Chrome”. No, sir.

And for a company like Oracle/Sun, who own Java, to include ask as part of their download… knowing that over the years millions and millions of users have simply clicked “Accept” when installing Java updates… is also criminal.

We’re veering off track here. I should probably have titled it “Is there any reliable software for spyware”, but whatever the case, how someone plays on the Web isn’t the issue. Finding ways to prevent damage when they do is what’s at stake.

And for those with multiple users, simply set up a guest account, non-administrative and pop in a password to log onto your account, but not the guest account. Then no changes can be made to the operating system. Most crap on the guest side cannot be installed, and even if it is, it stays on the guest side.

So it would appear that Google aren’t doing anything bad in listing Ask as a search engine
True, in chrome it’s not an installation or a pre-checked default, it’s a choice.

They sure are doing something bad: just having this junkware company in their list is the bad and stupid thing. Certainly there are corporate decisions made as to which engines to include arbitrarily in any browser. Internet Explorer/Edge only uses Bing, for obvious reasons. Firefox includes DuckDuckGo based on some logic in those meetings, as does Google. So why include an almost-criminal enterprise in that list? There is a reason, and I’m only guessing when I say “cash money”.

To answer your question, access-mdb: simply having the ask.com link in your search engine list does not put anything bad on your PC. But the only difference between using ask.com for searching, and installing the ask toolbar itself, is that the ask toolbar will get one into trouble that much quicker.

ask.com is well-known to be affiliated with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of freeware and spyware outfits, and it works like this (I believe Windows Secrets did a story once on this): online companies with wares to sell began long ago to hire advertising “brokers” to help them get their stuff distributed. They pay these people based on their returns. Many of them, including otherwise reputable firms, do not ask how exactly their revenue is increasing, something the government likes to call “plausible deniability”, as you’ve heard on TV.

So the brokerages make deals with all kinds of shady outfits to get their junkware (and even decent software) included as part of the installation package when you download something. (The only difference between them and, say, Adobe is that Adobe lets you know right up front every time you upgrade Flash that there is a box for you to uncheck (always preselected) with Chrome or AVG or some similar tool), while as you know from installing downloads, these items employ lots of tricks to get you to skip the uncheck part. This is called “opting out”, and several years back in Canada the feds came down hard on a cable company for using this technique (you got channels and paid extra by default: you had to know about opting out of those options, which many didn’t and ended up paying a huge chunk of change before catching on).

So right off the bat we have two unsavoury situations: one, a company that doesn’t care what’s in your download, as long as they get paid; two, trying to hide these extra installations.

Now, if you do use ask.com, their searches are populated with answers that bring advertisers and click-through deals to the top of the list. And many of these are the same type of junkware links. And every time you click on their preferred links, someone somewhere is getting paid a penny or two. So it is to their advantage to push those choices at you. The brokers use these links to get more money for themselves and the companies they represent, and it just gets bigger and bigger, because now they can show these “returns” to other companies as a way to prove how effective they are at generating revenue. Using the ask toolbar just gets you there that much faster.

My suspicion is also this: when you click through these linked and brokered sites, that’s where you’re going to get a lot more of these drive-by spyware downloads.

There are also, most definitely, the benign type of drive-by downloads, wherein the host page doesn’t even know it’s been compromised. Perhaps only a tiny pixel on the display has code attached to it. My own websites have no protection beyond the SPs that provide the space. I certainly can’t afford high-end protection on top of that (the saving grace being people rarely go to my sites, so there is no real interest in hacking me). So users get attacked and never know how, contrary to statements that suggest a lot of these people are clicking cluelessly.

That’s just scary.

Well, none of the search engines are “installed” as a program, but don’t you think we’re being a little nit-picky here. Please keep in mind I did not say that they are forcing it on you as an engine, or as a default.

I’d prefer to focus on the question of why it’s in there at all, as an option? Why would a large corporation include a link to a known spyware outlet? What purpose could it possibly achieve?

Tone it down? Where?

No, Tonyl, I disagree. That’s not the answer. The question is WHY is it there in the first place? How and why would Google knowingly include a notorious spyware search engine in their basic install?

I don’t know why the need Bing and AOL in there, either, unless perhaps Google lost some court case in Europe… lol, as wavy has suggested.

The greyed-out items in the list simply mean they are not the default selection.

No, NOT as the default. As one of the search engines in the available list. Man, if it was the default, I’d be at headquarters with a lynch mob.

Okay, go one step further then. Re-install Windows from scratch. Go nowhere on the ‘Net, but install Chrome. It’s there. I’ve done this many times for customers, then gone in and deleted the ask link. So tell me, where is it coming from if not from Google?