A Halloween Screensaver That Will Make Your Skin Crawl
Posted by Jonathan Cohen on October 31, 2006 04:34 PM
To commemorate Halloween and promote Web safety, SiteAdvisor highlights a spooky download alert for the season. Out of all the scary Web safety threats that haunt the Internet’s creepiest corners, “Happy Halloween Animated Screensaver” earns a dishonorable 10 out of 10 on the SiteAdvisor nuisance meter.
This screensaver is hosted at topdesktop.com (SA Report Page), which SiteAdvisor’s tests showed to have 2131 red downloads as of October 31st. If little Timmy instinctively clicked “Yes” or “Install” at every installation prompt, your computer would be overwhelmed by potentially unwanted programs.
What does an install sequence for a “10 out of 10” Web threat nuisance look like?
This screensaver came packed with nine bundled, unrelated programs:
1. Dealio
2. New.net with Quick! browse search assistant
3. WhenU SaveNow (twice)
4. RelevantKnowledge
5. MyWay Home Page Switch
6. Scenic News Messenger
7. Mystery e-mail submission
8. FileSubmit
9. Popular Screensavers Toolbar
We’ll highlight just a few of these to give you the idea, but they carry a similar theme: lots of fine print that gives publishers permission to serve ads based on browser activity.
One of the bundled programs that comes with the Happy Halloween Animated Screensaver is called RelevantKnowledge. This program displays survey questions about user shopping habits and records information like online purchases. It also allows “passively-tracked” online browsing behavior to be sent to ComScore Networks for “market research.” Pretty scary stuff.
RelevantKnowledge install prompt.
Once you complete the “Happy Halloween Animated Screensaver” installation, Internet Explorer opens a MyWay home page switch window. This post-install sequence then asks the user to install three more potentially unwanted programs. That’s three bonus annoyances for the price of one!
MyWay homepage switch prompt.
Here’s another sequence in the install which especially caught our attention. This window – which requests a first name, last name, and an e-mail address – doesn’t reveal where the information will be sent. Can you imagine answering such questions to a complete stranger who stopped you on the street? We recommend you never submit your personal information to any prompt that does not indicate the recipient and how the information will be used.
Name and e-mail submission prompt.
With 9 bundled programs and lots of scary, mysterious corners, clearly the “Happy Halloween Animated Screensaver” will leave several ghosts behind long after Halloween.
This particular screensaver is not an isolated case, though. Screensavers are infamous for the installation of potentially unwanted programs, and Halloween screensavers seem to be particular culprits. See this screenshot of a Google search (from October 30th, 2006) for the search term “Halloween Screensaver” (minus quotes)
An overwhelming majority of the organic search results for Halloween Screensaver are rated red by SiteAdvisor.
The SiteAdvisor team hopes you have a safe and fun Halloween. Install our free toolbar, and we’ll help you avoid the Internet’s tricks so you can enjoy its treats.
Comments
Please, the issue with ComScore and RelevantKnowledge is worth a closer look. You've quoted their statistics before as an authoritative source, yet this sort of install makes it clear that their participants aren't always willing.
http://blog.siteadvisor.com/2006/05/are_smileys_safe.shtml
"ComScore Networks estimates that a whopping 69 million Americans use instant messenger software. AOL, Yahoo! and MSN are the most common providers."
Posted by: Dave | November 1, 2006 10:33 AM
Hey I was wondering if you guys can check on a webpage called Forex.com, they have sent me a few emails that claim they are a practice trading site or something, well before I became smarter about this web stuff, I clicked the link in the email and right after that all the internet explorer pages I had open turned a solid color and my computer locked up. I then did various spyware and virus scanning, and was told I had over 100 problems. I fixed them up and reran the scanners. It was a different computer then the one I am on now, but I will never open that webpage again. Sincerely, Passion
Posted by: passion | December 8, 2006 04:43 PM
I have a question running away from the subject of post,
Why Site advisor dont´t hava a version for Opera?
Please meke SiteAdvisor for Opera Browser!!!
Posted by: Heitor | January 4, 2007 11:03 AM