While doing research for the forthcoming update to Windows Security Inside Out, I stumbled across Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. From a post dated last May, I learned that the Yahoo! Toolbar has anti-spyware features. The fact that Jeremy works for Yahoo makes the following bit of bragging just a little unseemly:
The previously mentioned secret alpha test was for the just announced upgrade to the Yahoo! Toolbar which now contains anti-spyware code.
I have to say, this one of those ideas that was immediately obvious
upon hearing it. “Of *course* we should use the Toolbar as a way to
help poor Windows users get all that crap off their machines.” But at
the same time it’s amazing how many folks never came up with it on
their own, me included.
This is followed by a bit of obligatory Microsoft-bashing, which I guess I should expect. But I have a couple problems with the details in this post. I was able to Google around (oops!) and find a bit of information about the Yahoo Toolbar, starting with this page.
Here’s the problem, though. Yahoo wants me to download the toolbar and install it on Internet Explorer. (Sorry, doesn’t work with Firefox.) But try as I might, I can’t find any details on how this software works, what it does and doesn’t do, who developed it, and what it will do for me. I can take a little Flash tour and see a Fisher-Price version of how the toolbar works. But no technical details. Zero.
So, I’m just supposed to trust Yahoo? No, thank you very much. In fact, the most insulting thing about the whole package is the search box at the very top of Yahoo’s Anti-Spyware Community page. Yahoo has generously provided links to top searches, using phrases like anti spyware, spyware doctor, free spyware, spyware removal, and adware spyware. When I followed the links, I found some good search results, mixed in with an appalling number of phony anti-spyware products. And of course, every search result page starts with three “sponsored results” at the top of the page and a sidebar filled with more ads along the right side of the page. When I viewed the search page at 1024 X 768, I saw 7 links that were paid for and only three that were supplied by Yahoo’s search engine.
I did a little more searching to see if Yahoo had buried the technical details of its spyware toolbar somewhere. Nothing on Yahoo’s site. I found lots of stories in the computer press, most of them slightly rewritten versions of Yahoo press releases. Ironically, the top search result that wasn’t from Yahoo was a negative review from Adware Report. A slightly more complimentary story from eWeek contained the details that the spyware scanner in the Yahoo Toolbar is based on technology from PestPatrol Inc. But the rest of the story is just marketing.
So, if anyone from Yahoo is reading this, tell me please: Why should I trust Yahoo? Why doesn’t Yahoo trust me with the details of this software? And why do I feel like this is really just a way to get me to spend more time on Yahoo’s search pages?
(Full disclosure: I make a few pennies a day from the Google ads served on this site. So I suppose you could say I’m in competition with Yahoo. Still, I do something that Yahoo doesn’t, which is to block ads from companies that I’ve decided are selling fake anti-spyware software. I don’t want their money, but I see those ads on the Yahoo search pages. If Yahoo is really serious about “helping poor Windows users,” they should just say no to those ads.)
Ed Bott 