No stopping StopBadware.org

By Ellen Messmer, NetworkWorld.com, 05/24/06

StopBadware.org makes value judgments about the kind of software that wants us to love it unconditionally no matter what it does. A refreshing change in a world where software, like mass-market entertainment of the worst kind, appears to be sinking to a low level of mass exploitation.

StopBadware.org evaluates software for bad behavior, and today the organization added four more software programs to its "Badware Watch List," a kind of software hall of shame.

The software programs named by StopBadware.org are: FunCade; Team Taylor Made's Jessica Simpson Screensaver; UnSpyPC; and Winfixer.

Thes programs were evaluted in terms of both the software's behavior and end-user license agreements by the StopBadware coalition, which conducts much of its lab work at Harvard University and Oxford University.

The four programs added to the growing "Badware Watch List" were identified as falling into any of seven categories of behavior deemed to be unwanted in software, ranging from deceptive installation unclear to causing harm to other computers.

The organizers of StopBadware.org are willing to raise their voices against software practices they deem to be unethical, if not downright illegal.

Take John Palfrey, the co-director of StopBadware.org and executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, on that Jessica Simpson Screensaver, which can automatically dial out to for-pay porn sites and its undisclosed adware.

Palfrey called it "one of the worst badware applications we've ever seen. It is almost a textbook example of a small software vendor using deceptive means to fund a software business."

Wonder what the singer and actress Jessica Simpson would say about it...

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