Anti-spyware Group Pegs AOL 9.0 As 'Badware'

[ronjor]

An anti-spyware group on Monday slapped AOL's client software with a "badware" label, and told users to avoid installing the program because it "adds software without disclosure" and "interferes with computer use."

Story

[trickyricky]

Great - I wonder if Kaspersky will be detecting it as badware then? In which case there will be interesting fights between AOL 9 and AOL Active Virus Shield in the coming days...

[RCGuy]

I'm not surprised because on the computer that I had been using, I had accidently uninstalled AOL 9.0 off my computer and when I reinstalled it(this time I had a-squared free already installed onto my computer), a-squared free picked up tons of spyware and tracking cookies after the installation. And after I quarantined all the spyware that a-squared had picked up, AOL 9.0 kept adding additional downloads one right after another which seemed to be compensating for what a-squared took off of my computer. I had never seen anything like it before in my life. But I got tired of fighting the downloads and allowed them to occur since I knew that I wouldn't be keeping the computer. But interestingly, AOL already came installed on my new computer. And of course, that was before I downloaded a-squared free. Therefore, Lord knows what has been secretly hidden on my new computer. But there are some features that I like on AOL, which is the reason why I haven't uninstalled it yet.

[Meriadoc]

I have two complimentry ways to get online, 1 given from BT - as for the last year I have been consulting to them and 1 from aol, also through work from a year and a half ago thats still working. I've been using the aol for my ISP because I wanted the software (kids account and page/parental controls) for my kids as I wanted something easy for them, and I use the dialer.
But recently I've been thinking of using the BT account because of the very reasons in that article, especially now the kids are older.
You can uninstall the Softomate toolbar and ViewPoint player but its the unannounced updates and installs that screw up the connection which I get mostly annoyed about - The kids once couldnt use aol for 5 days.
That article is spot on.
By the way DrWeb flags aol as a backdoor trojan