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Wake up, Windows users. This is what you
"agreed to" when you installed Hotbar:
"Information you might consider private or personally
identifiable ... is then transmitted to Hotbar and
automatically stored in Hotbar's databases."
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technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and
commentaries, continuously available online since
1983
T e c h n o f i l e
'Hotbar' spyware program bedevils Windows and
should be removed
July 20, 2003
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard
I've been getting an increasing
number of complaints about specific problems with Windows,
especially Windows XP. Most of these complaints seemed
mysterious, but I believe I've found the cause of many
of them.
The problem for many Windows users
appears to be a program they installed called Hotbar. In
some cases, users with afflicted PCs might not even realize
Hotbar was installed; they may have naively assumed that it
was part of Windows. In other cases, children or others in
the family might have installed Hotbar without their
knowledge or consent.
In every case, the solution is to remove
Hotbar entirely. I'll tell you how shortly.
Hotbar is a program that monitors the
Internet activities of all users of the Windows PCs where
it is installed. The company that markets Hotbar,
Hotbar.com Inc. at http://hotbar.com, explains in
detail what Hotbar does -- it's an appalling thing to
read -- but I doubt that many computer users looked at that
document before they installed the program.
Hotbar works with Internet Explorer and
Outlook Express, and affects Windows computers only. (There
is no Apple Macintosh version, and in fact there is very
little spyware of any kind for the Mac.)
Users apparently think Hotbar is making
their Internet browsing or e-mail use more enjoyable
because Hotbar lets them color mail and apply a skin (a
photographic overlay) to program windows. But it's
actually monitoring the surfing habits of all users and
reporting this information back to a central site so it can
be marketed to anyone who wants to buy it.
Problems attributed to Hotbar include
crashing, slowness and other misbehavior in Windows,
especially Windows XP.
What prompted my interest in Hotbar were
reports that popup-window blockers I've recommended
didn't work right or didn't work at all on some
Windows computers. This made no sense at first -- after
all, I had checked one of these blockers, WebWasher, in all
versions of Windows and found it to be exceptionally adept.
I've used it myself for years, and I never get popups
on my Windows PCs.
In checking for reports of problems with
popup blockers, I came across a flood of complaints about
Hotbar. One of the most common problems, according to
Hotbar ex-users, is the reappearance of popup windows
despite the presence of good popup-blocking software.
I'm not able to tell you this from
my own use -- after all, I'm not a Hotbar user and
never will be -- but others have suggested that Hotbar
allows some popups to get past the blocking software. These
might be Hotbar's own popup windows or ones that it
guides past the blocking software for advertising or
tracking reasons. I don't know for sure.
It's a sorry story. Software that
does this sort of thing is just plain invasive. Yet when
you go to the Hotbar site and read the EULA (the so-called
End User Legal Agreement, as if it were actually some kind
of legally binding document to those who never see it), you
see some startling admissions about what Hotbar does.
Here are excerpts from the Hotbar
site:
"For every Web page you view ...
the Hotbar software transmits and stores the following
information from your computer to Hotbar: Your IP Address,
which may include a domain name; the full URL of the Web
page you are visiting; general information about your
browser; general information about your computer's
operating system; your Hotbar cookie number ... and the
date and time the above information is logged."
E-mail you send to anyone else is also
affected. The recipients can be tracked, and hidden code
within the mail "may also retrieve information from
our servers (such as text and/or banner promotions) which
will, in such case, also appear in the e-mail sent and
viewed by the recipient in question." Apparently this
means Hotbar's central site is able to retrieve
information from the recipients of your mail, too.
There's more. According to the
Hotbar EULA:
"When you enter
information on a Web page (e.g., when you complete an
online registration form or sign up for a contest), the
operator of the Web site may insert that information into
its URL for that or the next page. This information often
appears after a question mark ("?") in the URL,
although it can appear in other places.
"This means that
your name, your address, your e-mail address, or similar
information you might consider private or personally
identifiable which you enter into a Web page sometimes
becomes part of a URL that is then transmitted to Hotbar
and automatically stored in Hotbar's databases. This
can also occur with words, topics, products, or phrases
you enter into search engines -- whether those engines
are provided by the Service itself or found elsewhere on
the Web -- while using the Service. Hotbar has no control
over what information third party Web sites put into
their URLs or where they put it, but any information in
each URL is collected and stored by Hotbar when you are
using the Service."
Regardless of how scary such
"agreements" are, you must realize that no one
has taken away your right to control what comes into your
home or office. You are in charge of your computer. You
should remove all spyware as well as any other software
that seems to be spyware and has no known useful
purpose.
To do that, install -- and use
regularly! -- a trustworthy spyware remover. Two that
I've successfully used are Ad-Aware and Spybot.
Ad-Aware is my favorite, but many readers have written to
praise Spybot. (I'm a recent Spybot user, so I
don't have much experience with it.)
Get Ad-Aware from www.lavasoftusa.com. The
free version (called simply "Ad-Aware") is what I
recommend. There are no performance advantages to the
versions that you have to pay for. Get Spybot from
http://spybot.eon.net.au.
It's also free. You can install both programs if
you want. They won't conflict with each other.
Former Hotbar users say Spybot is the
best way to get rid of Hotbar. Run the program and follow
the prompts. Make sure you remove all other spyware that
shows up on your PC.
(I've been told as of October 2004 that Ad-Aware no longer considers Hotbar as spyware and does not remove it any longer.)
If you have Internet-surfing kids, a
careless spouse or loose-fingered personal surfing habits
and haven't ever checked your family's Windows PC
for spyware, you'll probably be shocked at the number
of spyware programs Ad-Aware and Spybot will ferret out.
Get rid of all of them.
Every e-mail user knows about the No. 1
Internet annoyance, spam, and most Windows users should
realize that viruses are a big danger. But I doubt that
many Windows users realize spyware is so prevalent.
It's time to take full control of your Windows
computer. Getting rid of programs that take away your
privacy is a good way to start.
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