AOL 9.0 labelled "badware" and deceptive by net watchdog

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 29 August 2006 17:40

Your IT - Home IT

Still reeling from its customer search privacy scandal, internet service provider America Online (AOL) once again finds its reputation under attack, this time having its client software labelled badware by a non-profit group backed by prominent names in IT and education.

The AOL 9.0 free client software provided to AOL users has been labelled badware by StopBadware.org, an organization supported by Harvard and Oxford universities, as well as Google, Sun and Lenovo.

According to StopBadware.org, which describes itself as an internet neighborhood watch campaign, the free version of AOL 9.0 has earned the badware title because: it installs additional software without telling the user; it forces the user to take certain actions; it adds various components to Internet Explorer and the taskbar without disclosure; it may automatically update without the user's consent; and it fails to uninstall completely.

StopBadware.org on its information web page gives specific examples of additional programs that are installed by AOL 9.0 without adequate disclosure to the user. "AOL Software is bundled with a number of additional applications, including RealPlayer, QuickTime, AOL You've Got Pictures Screensaver, Pure Networks Port Magic, and Viewpoint Media Player. During the installation process the user is never clearly notified that AOL will be installing these programs," the advisory states.

The advisory also describes a pop-up box which appears a day after installation which forces the user to update its software without any option to close the box or decline the update.

In addition to all of the above, the AOL 9.0 software adds icons and its own toolbar to the Internet Explorer toolbar, adds items to the IE favourites menu and adds its own deskbar to the desktop taskbar.

For the coup de grace, however, a test by StopBadware.org found that users could not uninstal the AOL 9.0 software completely. "After uninstalling AOL and all of its bundled components using Add/Remove Programs, at least two AOL processes continue to run: AOLServiceHost.exe and AOLHostManager.exe. It is unacceptable for AOL processes to continue to run after AOL has been uninstalled by the user," according to StopBadware.org advisory.

Stung by the damaging publicity caused by the StopBadware.org report, an AOL response in which the ISP indicates it is taking steps to address the problems is posted on the StopBadware.org website. "AOL reports that they are reviewing this report and that they are taking steps to address what's noted here. With regards to uninstallation, AOL says that a design flaw in the uninstaller mistakenly leaves executables running, even after a restart. The company says it is working on a fix, and in the meantime, that the executables do nothing even though they are running."

John Palfrey, Executive Director of the Berkman Center and Harvard Clinical Professor of Law, and Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard Law Visiting Professor and Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University, are StopBadware.org co-directors. Supporting them are an advisory board and working group made up of some of the top experts in the field, including Internet pioneers Esther Dyson and Vint Cerf.

Bad publicity from an organization backed by such an eminent board of internet luminaries is the last thing AOL, one of the world's largest ISPs, needs right now.