Majorgeeks 1 Lavasoft 0

[PaulBB]

from: http://www.majorgeeks.com/story.php?id=31632

What does the future hold for Ad-Aware?

Much has changed over the years with spyware. The word spyware has been wrapped up into a single word (malware or viruses) by many companies and almost every anti-virus company out there also attempts to track and remove malware. Ad-Aware, the ones who originally took on the anti-spyware game many years ago and were considered the “must have” app have gone into a downhill spiral over the past five years and recently sold the company to Solaria. Rumor has it that the company could have sold for as little as a couple million dollars.

As many of you know, Majorgeeks stopped listing Ad-Aware as a “pick” some years ago as we watched the quality of the company slip over the years. While the program is still effective, it can’t stand up to the new generation of anti-spyware applications including Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, Superantispyware and IOBit Malware Fighter.

The Register has a new article online looking as deep as they could into the sale of Lavasoft:
“Lavasoft, originally based in Sweden, was purchased by an investment fund called Solaria in January, but no other holdings can be found for Solaria. In fact, the only ties that Solaria has are to the founders of Upclick, an affiliate marketing company. The founders of this company have also founded companies that sold online porn, reskinned peer-to-peer filesharing software, and allegedly "skimmed" online sales, charging customers for software that they did not order.

Solaria bought Lavasoft on 18 January 2011. Its listing in Businessweek reveals that it began operating as a subsidiary of Lulu Software after the acquisition, and is now also known as LVS Software. Lulu Software is registered as 7270356 Canada Inc in Montreal (4-page PDF/163KB).”

What does this mean for you? We don’t know but we wouldn’t download it. We have seen rogue companies go good and good companies go rogue but we have to wait this one out. It’s too soon to tell and it does not look promising.

[HAN]

Sad to hear but as the article notes, it's been quite a while since they made a truly relevant product. IMO, over the last 2 or 3 years, if you had a seriously infected machine, Ad-Aware couldn't get the job done.

[siljaline]

None of the information is new See this thread

[wtsinnc]

Ad-Aware, Ewido, and Spybot S&D were the three "must-Have" antispyware applications for myself and many others up to about 2007.

Ewido lives on (I suppose) buried somewhere deep inside AVG's Antivirus, while Spybot and Ad-Aware are undoubtedly destined to disappear as stand-alone applications.

Three prime examples of software that lost it's relevency.

[Noob]

Wow, unbelievable who would have though Lavasoft would have allowed that

[siljaline]

Pointing to another thread where the same information is replicated.

@Mods please lock above thread.

Thank you.

[noone_particular]

IMO, Ad-aware started going downhill in 2004 when they decided to stop targeting junk like HotBar and NewDotNet. The details would make for a ridiculously long post. In a nutshell, the companies threatened to sue LavaSoft for labelling them adware or spyware and LS backed down, using the long winded EULA's these garbage apps presented as justification. on that standard, if the EULA mentioned data collection anywhere in its long winded, brain numbing pages, they were exempted, regardless of whether their TAC (threat assessment chart) qualified it for removal or not. They dodged user questions and complaints on the issue, locked/deleted forum threads, banned users, etc. Long time supporters left in waves. Eventually the old forum disappeared entirely and was replaced by one that didn't contain the controversial material. AAW has been going downhill ever since.

[PJC]

I guess that was the final stroke for Lavasoft...
Once upon a time, Ad-ware was a legendary product...

[xxJackxx]

They were great a decade ago. I haven't used them probably in that long.

[Ibrad]

I may be in the minority here but I want to wait and see what happens. All of those things they say are coming in the next version of Ad-Aware sound good (if classic means AntiSpyware only that's one thing I have been asking for on their forums). As they say in America "Innocent until proven guilty"

By the way in that MG article I disagree with them saying Ad-Aware is worse then IMF.