[agitator]

I had to chew out a client this afternoon over that. Misleading windoze messenger service messages were popping up on every computer, including their server, as if norton anti-virus had detected something but it was in fact spam generated by that [expletive deleted] Gator spam-ware.

I asked, "What software have you installed lately that didn't originally come with the computer I left on your desk?" The answer was a "neat little 'FREE' date manager with lots of nifty little features!"

I asked, "Did you read the ENTIRE license agreement when you installed it?" She replied "No! Nobody ever reads that stuff!"

"Well, had you bothered to read it, you would have noticed that you agreed to allow the installation of software that contacts its home base from your computer, retrieves spam, and then annoys you by popping up system messages in your face. Now that I've killed a half hour of my time, and we're going to kill another half hour of OUR time while we remove that [expletive deleted] spamware off your computer, was that thing really FREE?"

Unfortunately, I can't prohibit the client from installing software on their machines or I would have. As it is that neat little bit of "free" software was anything but "free."

[FreedomPoster]

Ad-aware is on every machine I touch, set to do a complete scan on boot-up. It looks like we have a strong consensus on this thread.

Full setup at home:

Router appliance
Ad-aware everywhere
auto-updating Norton AV everywhere
Often running Zonealarm (it's been a little flakey under XP - anyone have anything better?)

[Cicero]

Gator is certainly one of the worst of them. And Comet Cursor.

[jenny65]

Those motherf*ckers (I'm not going to be as careful about my expletive deletion) at Gator ought to be tarred, feathered, then set on fire, while their families watch. Seriously, the stuff they do should be illegal.

There's a free message forum server called Network 54 that has a forum I used to frequent. For the last few months, they've gotten downright NASTY with their pop-up ads. Gator is one of them. About every other time you load a page, you get a pop-up box claiming that "Internet Explorer needs to download and install the following plugin to properly view this page". It's exactly the same plugin box you get when you need to download Flash Player or whatever. Except in this case, it's Gator. If you press the "Yes" button (which many people probably do), it'll install its evil spyware. Because there is absolutely no reason that Gator needs to be installed in order to view the page, I'd say that's misleading if not outright lying to the user.

They should be put permanently out of business. If this gets removed because of my first sentence, so be it. I cannot possibly express my hatred for these bastards.