drumphil

The reason they wont remove the virus designation is because opencandy is indeed malware, that deliberately uses deceptive tactics (like greyed out boxes, designed to look like you can't click on them) to trick people into installing software they don't want. Lightning UK, the author of Imgburn, knows this, but refuses to do anything about it, or even admit that he is now helping distribute malware. He is apparently happy to take a cut of the money made by deceiving people. From the response you recieved: "These are legitimate applications that often try to use social engineering to make the user install additional offers during the installation of the software the user originally wanted. A PUA classification of an application is the result of software, an advert or a website exhibiting one or more offending behaviors and/or properties." http://www.avira.com/en/potentially-unwanted-applications Tell me, what possible reason can you think of to grey out the boxes people need to click to avoid the instalation of software they don't want, other than to decieve them into thinking they have no choice? They do this so that they can trick as many people as possible, while deflecting criticizm by saying "hey, technically you could opt out, if you realized you could click the options we greyed out so you would think you couldn't click them" Their business is to trick as many people as possible, while avoiding prosecution, and having a bunch of clueless people defend them on the basis of the fact that you can technically avoid their offers.

cricket cricket.....

cricket cricket.... Come on lightning UK. Are you man enough to actually discuss this honestly with your users?

That isn't the whole story. Because whoever makes OpenCandy realizes that most people are clued on by now and will opt out of such "offers", they have resorted to deception. The OpenCandy installer uses deceptive tactics like greyed out options that are designed to look like you shouldn't be able to click on them. (why the hell else would you grey out a clickable button?? I mean, FFS, really?) The only reason anyone does that deliberately is because they hope to deceive someone, and they know it works. They wouldn't do it if it didn't. That is why they demand complete control over the interface that is presented to users with these "offers", as Lightning UK is so fond of pointing out. That is why malwarebytes, and many other such programs recognize it as malicious. Because it is. It isn't a false positive, as Lightning UK has claimed here previously. It deliberately uses deception to trick people into installing software they don't want. That meets the definition of malware. Lightning UK is aware of this, but chooses to take their money, ethics be damned. Now, I don't know if you signed a contract before you realized what they were really up to, and now they've got you by the balls, or if you understood exactly what ethical compromises you'd have to make for the money, but this isn't right, and I'm sure that you know it.

Hellooooooo Lightning Uk.. What's up? Cat got your tongue?

"You need to complain to opencandy, not here. All the dll inserted does is load the screens and insert them during setup. Lightning UK doesn't design those screens, opencandy does. Ask them to foot the bill." Rubbish. Allowing open candy to run with the imgburn installer was a decision Lightning UK made. He knows for a fact that they use deceptive tactics, and he still allows them to run their software with his installer. He could decide to remove their software, but instead he allows them to use their deceptive tactics. He, and you now, are pretending that he can't do anything about it. He can. He can remove their software from his installer. That would be the ethical thing to do. He is now complicit in their deceptive tactics. He knows exactly what they do, but continues to pretend that because he doesn't design the opencandy software, that he bears no responsibility in this matter. He gets a share of the money made through deliberate deception. "As to avoid opencandy there's multiple easy ways. - read the screens, I've NEVER had opencandy install crap on my systems ever since IMGBurn first started to use the dll - unplug from the internet, the dll won't be able to connect to the server : no screens - run the setup with the /nocandy parameter: no screens" So, are you saying that software that is deliberately designed to trick people into installing things they don't want, is ethical, so long as there is, technically, a way to avoid it? Apparently taking money from a company that makes it by deceiving people is now ok, just so long as you can't control what they do, and so long as you pretend that removing it isn't an option. He can control what they do. He can refuse to let them run their software while it continues to be deceptive.

cricket cricket......

You know for a fact that the open candy software that runs with your installer uses deceptive tactics, like greyed out options that are designed to look like you shouldn't be able to click on them. And rather than removing the open candy installer from your software package, you allow them to keep using their deceptive software, and tell us we should complain to them?? Really? You chose to include the open candy software. You know for a fact that they, with their deceptive tactics are deceiving people into installing software they don't want. And yet you still allow them to run their software when your program is installed?? How is it that you can believe that this is ethical? "Oh, I don't control that, you'll have to talk to them. Nothing I can do.." Bullshit. You could remove their software until they have demonstrated that they no longer use deceptive tactics. Instead you have chosen to continue to expose people to their deception by continuing to allow them to run their software as part of your installer package. You know what they are doing. You could stop it from happening. But you choose not to. Any software that deliberately attempts to trick the user into installing something they don't want qualifies as malware. You are now one of the distribution vectors for the deceptive open candy malware. Do you really believe that the greyed out options were just an accident? There is only one reason to design an interface like that. The reason open candy does this is that their business is specifically, getting people to install software they don't want. They know for a fact how few people would deliberately install the software they offer when given the option, and that 99.99% of their success is from people they tricked with their interface design. Have a look at this page: http://darkpatterns.org/ "Normally when you think of “bad design”, you think of the creator as being sloppy or lazy but with no ill intent. This type of bad design is known as a “UI anti-pattern”. Dark Patterns are different – they are not mistakes, they are carefully crafted with a solid understanding of human psychology, and they do not have the user’s interests in mind. We as designers, founders, UX & UI professionals and creators need to take a stance against Dark Patterns." You aren't telling people the truth when you say their antivirus warnings are a false positives. Deliberately deceptive software, designed to make money by tricking people meets the definition just fine. Come on. How about some honest answers? Ps. How did i come to be posting about this here? Because my father called me up and asked "I need to burn a cd image thingy, what should I get to do that? Should I buy nero?"... So obviously I told him, "Just get imgburn. Great software, should do the job fine". Well, I go away on holidays for a few weeks, and when I get back, I get a call from him saying that he just had to spend $150 at his local computer store because everything went to shit on his computer after he installed imgburn. Now, after being tricked numerous times before, I've trained him pretty well at reading every page and looking carefully at every check box to make shure he doesn't agree to something he doesn't want, so I was surprised. Until I took at look at some of the images of the open candy installer in action. I sent him a picture of a page with a greyed out option, and he said "yeah, I saw that, but the other option is greyed out, so I didn't think I had a choice"....... Fucking brilliant. You and open candy both get a cut from the money made by deceiving my father, and costing him $150 in computer repairs. Also made me look like an idiot for recommending your software that screwed him over. Thanks a lot.