my 78 year old grandfather recently upgraded his copy of firefox and mysteriously the Yahoo toolbar was installed, and his default search engine and homepage were set to yahoo. firefox should stop being evil.
The Yahoo toolbar gets installed almost every time I update Java or Flash. It drives me crazy because (a) I want to update frequently to stay secure, but (b) I don't want to get a bunch of crap bloatware and it seems like they use a different "gotcha" technique every few months so I always get duped.
It's infuriating because it makes (some) users want to avoid these updates which are, presumably, in the interest of the entire community.
Can't they get their ad-revenue somewhere else besides critical security patches???
The Java update system prompts me to install the Yahoo! toolbar each and every time. You can click "no" but you need to be diligent. It's infuriating - I don't want the toolbar!
In that case you should consider Secuna PSI. It's a lightweight tool which monitors installed software, patchlevels and known vulnerabilities. It's also free as in beer.
If updates are available, it will offer direct links to updates which are just that. Even for Adobe Flash.
As a bonus you get another nerdmetric for your machine with regard to security :)
Nope. It's the worst on Windows, but it's bad everywhere (except my iPhone).
Linux package managers are pretty good, but if you try to get other software things get weird. Installing Dropbox on Ubuntu is surprisingly bad. You have to click through all these info screens and then have it download the proprietary daemon part. That's one of the reasons we made http://ninite.com/linux
I use a Mac, and we're working on a version for those too. The whole drag from a disk image to the applications folder is really confusing for a large number of users. And anything that makes you click through a .pkg installer is a pain too.
The iPhone isn't perfect, either, though. It spits you back out on to the homescreen, which is quite aggravating if you had wanted to install something else. At least with multitasking it no longer loses your spot in the App Store app /too/.
this is not default behaviour, so it's something besides firefox itself -- Google is the default search entity for every firefox install/upgrade I've ever used, and there's certainly no yahoo toolbar.
More importantly, your talking about apple's and oranges. He's referring to installing unrelated software that installs browser plugins, like Office, iTunes, or Google Earth or Chrome. If you download a Yahoo! branded firefox, you'll expect to get a Yahoo! branded firefox. If you install iTunes, it shouldn't go around installing other software.
> So iTunes shouldn't install software [without your knowledge or consent, or through deceitful means], that makes listening to and buying music easier?
lol. Yeah if they would add a single extra step to the install process and Firefox would protect itself a little better, that all sounds reasonable. ;)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Firefox already alert you on startup of newly installed Plugins? I mean, I don't imagine Mozilla wants to stop people from installing addons/plugins. Rather, they don't want them doing it behind a users back. If I installing something and specifically request it to install a plugin, I've already given it permission. Should Firefox handle installation, or should it be the OS? Do we really want Mozilla asking us every time to install something when we've already given our permission to install something?
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Firefox already alert you on startup of newly installed Plugins?
Eh sorry I don't know the answer, been a Safari/Chrome user for a while.
From an end user POV, I think it would be okay to have both the OS permissions grab and a warning from Firefox that new plugins have been installed.
You've already granted the original app (iTunes) permission to install whatever, but it wouldn't be much more of a hassle to have Firefox popup a confirmation box that new stuff has been installed (assuming it doesn't, or at least it didn't on the OP's system).
Not sure who voted you down, but that's the exact same behavior that they call out in the article. And with exactly as much proof. Comment was spot-on.
