Ben Edelman
February 20 , 2006
Nonconsensual 180 Installations Continue, Despite 180’s “S3″ Screen
On Friday morning (February 17), I received a nonconsensual installation of 180solutions Zango software through a security exploit.
But what’s newsworthy here is that 180solutions got installed, even though 180 last year told the world that these nonconsensual installations were impossible.
180’s October press release correctly describes the serious harms that occur when users receive many advertising programs. “A myriad of unwanted software … can often negatively impact system performance,” 180 admitted. But 180 then claimed that S3 would keep 180 out of such bundles. I disagree. According to my records, the installation at issue also installed Ad-w-a-r-e, Adservs, Integrated Search Technologies, Internet Optimizer, Media Tickets, New.net, Quicklinks, Surfsidekick, Tagasaurus, Targetsaver, Toolbar888, Ucmore, Webhancer, Web Nexus, WinFixer, and more. These many programs collectively bombarded my test PC with an incredible 730 registry keys, 1194 registry values, 461 files, and 43 file folders. Worse, the newly-installed programs caused 61 processes to run on my test PC, via 24 EXEs set to load each time I turned on my computer. The programs even added three different toolbars to my web browser.
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