Stop ruining a great program with bundled adware.

[disgruntled]

"You don't have to install it" - I am sick of hearing this.  If I made you a sandwich and surrounded it with dog crap and told you "just don't touch the crap" would you be happy about it?  Of course not.  All this adware does is annoy people who know to avoid it and damage the computers of people who don't know any better.  STOP TRYING TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF PEOPLE FOR A QUICK BUCK.   It is and will always be inexcusable.

 

 

I appreciate the hard work done on ImgBurn; it's a fantastic program.  Whoever in your group thought that an OpenCandy-loaded installer was a great idea needs to be dismissed.  This isn't how software grows, it's how it dies.

[spinningwheel]

damage the computers of people who don't know any better.

 

And it does that how?  What nonsense.  When you write a great piece of software you can do what you like with it, until then as far as I know, no one here personally invited anyone to use it..

[rjamesd]

 

damage the computers of people who don't know any better.

 

And it does that how?  What nonsense.  When you write a great piece of software you can do what you like with it, until then as far as I know, no one here personally invited anyone to use it..

 

Can you yourselves 100% guarantee that the 'candy' / 'offers' / toolbars that or whatever you want to call it, that are in the imgburn installer, are safe and will NOT harm the user's computer AND that they can completely remove it after install?

 

Myself I have donated 30$ to imgburn directly (so far, may consider donating more) so that action can shut up anyone trying to justify these offers. I've said this point so many times already: why taint a great piece of software with such offers included in the install and why don't you make imgburn paid for like many reputable vendors do. People don't want the offers, don't use them, one day, if they have any sense, the makers of such toolbars / candy are going to wake up to this fact and stop giving you money for bundling their stuff in your software. Then where will you be? Great piece of software tainted by the crapware, no more money money coming from them, when you could have set  up a proper online store. Your abilities in creating imgburn clearly show you are also capable of setting up a paid-for offering, seem like bundling crapware is the lazy option...

 

Points expanded on here:

 

http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=21642&p=148532

[spinningwheel]

Can you yourselves 100% guarantee that the 'candy' / 'offers' / toolbars that or whatever you want to call it, that are in the imgburn installer, are safe and will NOT harm the user's computer AND that they can completely remove it after install?

 

 

Has anyone posted anything that looks like the 'opencandy' damaged or otherwise messed their machine up?  NOPE!

[rjamesd]

 

Can you yourselves 100% guarantee that the 'candy' / 'offers' / toolbars that or whatever you want to call it, that are in the imgburn installer, are safe and will NOT harm the user's computer AND that they can completely remove it after install?

 

 

Has anyone posted anything that looks like the 'opencandy' damaged or otherwise messed their machine up?  NOPE!

 

But OpenCandy is relatively unknown so my point about people being naturally suspicious still holds.  If you had data on 1000000+ downloads of a toolbar (e.g. Ask) with no issues reported compared with 10000 downloads of OpenCandy which one would you prefer to have installed accidentally? The former, Ask, of course.

 

To answer my own question made to you: you cannot guarantee that these 'offers' / toobars / opencandy will not cause inconvenience at the least and at worst harm a person's machine. You only have control over your software, imgburn itself. Sure, same applies to better known toolbars such as Ask in that you can't control what they do but they have an established reputation much like imgburn itself does. 

 

I would like to believe that these 'offers' / toobars / opencandy are harmless and can be uninstalled completely with confidence and malwarebytes forum discussions indicate that this is the case.

 

It is only recently that these 'offers' / toobars / opencandy have started to appear in imgburn so people are so familiar with clicking through the install when upgrading or reinstalling or to a new machine that now they are caught out by these things being installed. I think that is one of the main reasons why these discussions have started - people are shocked because of this apparently sudden introduction. And the deceitfulness as to how it was introduced - default setting 'on' and even your own LIGHTNING UK is a "little put off" by the 'Recommended by imgburn bit' http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=21629&p=148365

 

If they had always been present in the install we would have been familiar with this to avoid it. Sure you can say it was our action that installed it, but we are human beings (can I check - are you?!) and we make mistakes, overlook things and these'offers' / toobars / opencandy exploit that weakness by having things on default and even 'Recommended by imgburn'. This goes against the qualities of imgburn being an honest useful quality piece of software.

 

And what is the point of the 'offers' / toobars / opencandy if people either avoid them in the install or get annoyed and uninstall them directly after installing imgburn. It's futile! You say that imgburn makes money from this so the money must come from these 'offers' / toobars / opencandy paying you to include it in your tool. So as I've said, aren't they going to wake up one day and realise that no one is using their stuff and stop paying you? It really really really is a weak business model and absolutely astounds me that you seem incapable of setting a system for a paid version of imgburn

 

Furthermore if you sadly continue with including the 'offers' / toobars / opencandy, can you a put a note next to each download links on YOUR site that the install contains these?