Coffee break- be careful with Sun Java updates
So I sit down in the neighborhood coffee shop, not that big chain but a small independent one. I pull my laptop out of the bag and fire it up. Of course it does a few minutes of resuming from hibernation and when it comes up it notifies me that the Sun Java has an update available, do I want to install it? I decide to go ahead and do it since I’m just getting going and off it goes. It does its thing for almost five, yes five full minutes during which it was bashing my hard drive and rendering my system very sluggish to do other things. When it finally finished I fired up Firefox to get some work done and the first thing I notice is a giant, ugly, garish Yahoo! Toolbar that Sun apparently installed for me. Now there could easily have been a confirmation box for that install during the Java update, the install had my system so tied up that I may have clicked the screen to see what was happening and that was buffered thus providing my approval to install this toolbar I don’t want. I’ll give Sun the benefit of the doubt about that. The unforgivable part is that not only did it install the toolbar but a confirmation box appeared in Firefox giving the Yahoo! Toolbar permission to change my browser home page and default search engine to Yahoo!. Bad software company, bad company!
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Unfortunately, this happens a lot. Two of my software programs have needed updating this week and both had ‘other software’ attached ready to catch out the unwary.
I try and make it a policy not to let any updates through when I’m not at home or doing something important on the PC (reading this blog is one of those, isn’t it?).
Yes, there is a dialog as part of the install that asks for permission to install the toolbar. Nevertheless, I *hate* this approach, and I am not the only one.
And Sun isn’t the only one using this approach as well. Just see this blog post from John Lilly (the CEO of Mozilla) when Apple pulled a similar stunt with iTunes installing Safari on Windows…
http://john.jubjubs.net/2008/03/21/apple-software-update/
Hehehe. Poor Windows users.
I’m pretty sure it tells you on the main install of Java but perhaps not on the updates. I can understand their reasoning but it is quite intrusive if you miss the install screen.
Johnathan, it definitely told me during my recent update of Java (I have a screenshot, because it pissed me off).
Some of the Adobe add-ons pull the same stunt.
Some toolbars have been security risks. I’d imagine that removing them through all browsers gets rid of the problem but I don’t know for sure; somehow I’ve always managed to find the tiny checkboxes, but I’m sure that is harder to notice in a coffee shop.
Sun has done this for quite a while. What surprises me is that it is the Yahoo! toolbar and not the Google toolbar. Every time I’ve seen this in the past with Sun JAVA it has been Google’s toolbar.
It is just me or is this happening a *lot* with Yahoo of late? At least twice recently, once installing CCleaner I think it was–I’ve installed a piece of software and had to un-check the install Yahoo something or other box. I know this is a good source of income for houses putting out under funded but good products, but I’m concerned about the long term trend.
The health of the shareware/freeware model depends on us ponying up. If we don’t, I assume folks look to the likes of Yahoo for a source of income. Does Roboform also do this? I have a vague memory. I wonder if this is part of some new Yahoo marketing skeam. It rather smacks of Microsoft’s et als browser wars and how they once (?) tried to gain access to screen real estate.
If this is a trend, it is worrisome. Yahoo was once a good company, and this looks like the act of one on faltering legs. The first signs are always those of questionable ethics, and it is usually one of intrusion, presumption, and arrogance.
Thanks! Your post reminded me to uninstall the Sun Java runtime that came pre-installed on my new laptop. Been doing fine for many years without Java.. only had to pass on a few apps, the database portion of OpenOffice, and NASA’s near-earth asteroid trackers. Now, if I could just get rid of the .NET framework.. =)