Wednesday, April 16, 2008

MORE PRIVACY INVASION

There has to be a stop on invasion of computers. Advertisers want to know what we want to buy and sneak into our computers to find out what we look at. If you look at car sites, you will be given more car ads. I drowned in pet catalogs when I ordered pet gift online or bought one in a pet store or something. Life was bad enough when we used to fill in registration cards that asked our hobbies, income, and tastes. At least you had a choice to send in the form or not and could write whatever you chose to indicate an interest in. The new advertising schemes actually take over your computer without your permission or knowledge. I do not know why there aren't some laws made so that people can report violations and, at worst, cut the practice down.

Phorm is a new UK trial. " Online advert system Phorm could make the net less secure and breaches human rights, the service's creators have been told." Are they worried? Seemingly not. Hotbar is one of the spyware goodies that invades us. Hotbar consumes over 20MB of disk space on your hard drive. It will slow down your browser, make your PC boot slower, and may crash your computer altogether. Hotbar also disables certain popup blockers. Conversely, if your computer shows any of these symptoms, run Ad-Aware, SpyBot, or any other programs to remove this type of program. Run them frequently! If you find Hotbar on your computer, get it off!

It is sad to note how long this has been a problem and how little has been done about it to stop it.
I resent robots trolling my computer to pick up addresses but resent, even more, friends who insist on mailing me humor with pages of addresses in the forwards. It is bad enough that they are sending addresses out but, worse, they have included mine in full view to be harvested.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hotbar is a safe and secure program and is tested daily to make sure it is always safe.

We are certainly aware of the ever-growing number of harmful applications that have surfaced on the Web.
Please be assured that Hotbar, unlike such applications, will always make the user’s privacy our top priority. Hotbar is a safe and secure program which installs only upon user's download and does nothing without the user's consent.

Following are some clarifications on the function of Hotbar's software:

1. Hotbar does not build personal profiles.
2. Hotbar does not gather any data you enter in online forms.
3. Hotbar does not access any sensitive information entered while surfing, such as account details, passwords, credit card information, products you purchase online, etc.
4. Hotbar’s installation does not install any third party applications. In addition, Hotbar can be installed only through a standard download process initiated by the user from Hotbar's websites and is easy to uninstall.

Unfortunately, it appears that some scanning applications have mistakenly included Hotbar on their lists. We are aware of this situation and our legal team is contacting these companies in order to be removed from their lists.

Hotbar is a user friendly program, and it is of paramount importance to us that our program will function properly and will be easily installed and removed.
You can remove Hotbar from your computer via Add or Remove programs (Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add or Remove programs), you may use our uninstaller and you may also use the uninstall instructions we offer under the Hotbar component in the program’s list.
Following this procedure, Hotbar and all Hotbar related components will be completely removed from your computer.

To remove Hotbar from your computer, please do the following:

1. Close all open applications/programs/windows
2. Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs
3. Find Hotbar on the list
4. Click the Change/Remove button
5. Check the components you wish to remove, click Next and follow the on-screen instructions.
6. Restart your computer

Alternatively, you can use our uninstaller:
1. Click on the following link - http://client.hotbar.com/downloads/Uninstaller/Uninstaller.exe
2. Click Run and follow on-screen instructions
3. Restart your computer.

Hotbar support team can be easily contacted through our help site: http://hotbar.com/helpdesk/faq/index.asp or directly at: support@hotbar.com