WhenU delisted by major anti-spyware vendors

[MasterRacker]

I find this a bit troubling.

http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/spyware/whenu_detection_dropped.php

[purple]Jeff
It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day

 

[aquias]

Well, as disturbing as it is people do bring up a few good points. We need to wait and see what the official word is from these vendors prior to us all jumping on their backs about this.

However, if no explination is forthcoming from the companies then I won't recommend either of those for spyware removal.

 

[2ffat]

A bit disturbing???? How about ?

I wonder what MS's Giant spyware will do now that they vowed to keep it free?

James P. Cottingham
-----------------------------------------
^{To determine how long it will take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units.}

 

[Mike2287]

Are they keeping it free? You have a link i can read

 

[aquias]

I'll be interested in that link as well. For testing and, why not, purposes I've loaded it to a Win2k3 server. And I get an expiration date for the software...

 

[2ffat]

OK. Here's the link to the article:

http://news.com.com/Windows+anti-sp...+charge/2100-7355_3-5577202.html?tag=nefd.top

I downloaded the beta but you should be aware of the new Windows validation program. It took me 15 minutes to go through various validation screens. You will have to download another program to be validated, allow Active-X to run (which means Mozilla/FireFox users must use IE), and you will need your original installation Key. If you do not have the original key, be prepared to go through more validation screens. At several points I had a hard time being able to click on the field I needed to update. I finally tabbed and back-tabbed until I got the the correct fields.

James P. Cottingham
-----------------------------------------
^{To determine how long it will take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units.}

 

[MasterRacker]

James, I should have typed:

"I fine this a <dry extreme understatement>bit</dry extreme understatement> troubling.

LOL

More seriously, if the new WhenU is truly upfront about installing, they should have change some signatures on the client itself so AS programs could ignore the new version and continue to report the old, stealthed versions. (This is at a minimum).

[purple]Jeff
It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day

 

[Happo]

I downloaded the beta but you should be aware of the new Windows validation program. It took me 15 minutes to go through various validation screens. You will have to download another program to be validated, allow Active-X to run (which means Mozilla/FireFox users must use IE), and you will need your original installation Key. If you do not have the original key, be prepared to go through more validation screens. At several points I had a hard time being able to click on the field I needed to update. I finally tabbed and back-tabbed until I got the the correct fields.

2ffat,
I must say that I had a vastly different experience in downloading MS Antispyware Beta, I found the validation procedure very simple.

Firstly, validation was optional and you could download it without validating.

I was only asked to download a small zip file (11kb I think) which extracted into GenuineCheck.exe which, when executed gave me a short validation code which I copied and pasted back into the browser. I was downloading within 2 minutes and it never asked for my original installation key or anything like that.

The other thing, I use Firefox exclusively and certainly wasn't required to switch to ie.

I must say I was pleasantly suprised how simple it was.

Daniel.

 

[2ffat]

I used the GenuineCheck, too in both IE and Mozilla. It stll wanted active-x and my original disks. ??????


James P. Cottingham
-----------------------------------------
^{To determine how long it will take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units.}

 

[aquias]

Well...I, for one, am done with Ad-Aware...

http://www.lavasoftsupport.com/index.php?showtopic=59336

Their response to this and the "work around" provided is riduclous for any end user to have to deal with (provided you can find half the installed programs on your system). Not to mention that it had taken them 3 days to comment at all on this and then over a week to offer up anything further is completely...well, put some bad words there.

 

[MasterRacker]

Yeah, this bothers me a lot also. Since there is no scanning distinction between the old, bad WhenU and the new "good" WhenU, LavaSoft's method of handling this leaves us all vulnerable to the old, bad version. As much as I like the product, it's time to re-evaluate my preferred tool.



[purple]Jeff
It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day

 

[aquias]

Another big hang up I have with this, is that I haven't seen anything yet to communicate how/if they intend to communicate what programs are delisted with users. Nor do I have confidence in the fact that they won't continue to buckle when a company pressures them into making a change to their system.

Whether in league with an adware company or not (I don't believe the conspiracy talk) adjusting your system based on their requests isn't a company/product that I can rely on.

For those of you interested in getting more information on this spywarewarrior.com and dslreports (I believe, follow the first link provided by jeff to get to it) have a TON of information and more than a few posts regarding this. To say this shook up a hornets nest may be a bit of an understatement (especially given that Lavasoft is taking Ad-Aware to stores now)

 

[MichealC4]

change in the way WhenU's software is bundled into certain other programs.

Certain other programs? I try to not read too much in to things, but the wording there just bothers me, more than a little at that.

----------------------------
"Will work for bandwidth" - Thinkgeek T-shirt

 

[2ffat]

Here's an article on WhenU by Brian Livingston:

http://windowssecrets.com/050224/

You may have to go towards the bottom of the article to see it.

James P. Cottingham
-----------------------------------------
^{To determine how long it will take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units.}