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Lots of bad information floating around here.
Ads are not spyware. Most web pages are ad supported.
Spyware is a small application that actually gathers information (spys)
about the web pages you visit and transmits this information to a
demographics databasing company that sells the information to advertisers.
Doubleclick is one of the biggest in the business.
Spyware usually does not gather information about you, just your browsing
habits.
Example: Advertisers want to know what web pages the people who visit
sports web sites visit, so they can adjust their advertising.
Rik Rasmussen
Original Message:
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From: Franco Gornati francogornati@xxxxxx
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 20:02:40 +0100
To: amibroker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [amibroker] Off_Topic: Clearing my name on Tabbed Browsers
Ken Close wrote:
> After I posted a recommendation to NetCaptor here, I saw various
> messages saying this was spyware. Sure enough, Google delivered various
> hits (near the top) claiming NetCaptor was spyware.
[snip]
> Here is his reply (below). A big lesson is: do not necessarily believe
> the top hits from a Google search; more due diligence is needed
Ken,
I tried Netcaptor some time ago and decided to drop it because of its
using of spyware services. (I'm talking of Netcaptor free version. Ads
supported.)
Since then I never come back and never checked for the details of its
evolution because I didn't see enough reasons to buy a browser and its
free version was still ads supported.
Just to better focus what spyware is I paste below some lines from
www.spychecker.com (www.spychecker.com/spyware.html)
"Spyware is Internet jargon for Advertising Supported software (Adware).
It is a way for shareware authors to make money from a product, other
than by selling it to the users.
[snip]
Why is it called "Spyware" ?
While this may be a great concept, the downside is that the advertising
companies also install additional tracking software on your system,
which is continuously "calling home", using your Internet connection and
reports statistical data to the "mothership". While according to the
privacy policies of the companies, there will be no sensitive or
identifying data collected from your system and you shall remain
anonymous, it still remains the fact, that you have a "live" server
sitting on your PC that is sending information about you and your
surfing habits to a remote location....."
This from spychecker.com.
So after your last post I understood that more due diligence was needed
and took the time to download a copy of Netcaptor and to install it in
free mode.
That it's what I saw.
When you launch it, a popup window welcomes you telling that
"Netcaptor sends the address of the page you are visiting to our web
server so we can choose related links and relevant ads to display"
Follow some assurances that your password, id, form post data, ecc.
won't be sent to the mothership.
If you also check the active TCP processes you can see that Netcaptor
always has an open connection to its site.
So I would file this behaviour as 'spyware'. Or at least a big annoyance.
Franco
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