Ask Toolbar gets the banhammer on Windows

Wynona · 12 Jun 2015

Jools said:

I never get where the money is in the first place: you would think the bad reputation for sponsoring this kind of crap would exceed the visibility you gain by displaying the ads.

Sadly there are folks who don't know the difference, Jools. They'll just click on anything that pops up.

Jools · 12 Jun 2015

Yes, I get that, but even my father has started to hate the ask toolbar, although he has no idea how it was installed. I would imagine this generates a lot of bad will towards those crap companies.

Even semi-professional users can fall for the victim of crapware, sometimes you only see the opt-out button if you click the custom install button, and sometimes you actually have to click cancel to decline the offer and just unticking the selection is not enough.

Yes I know these installer say "read the following carefully" but who has time to do that?

badrobot · 12 Jun 2015

Oh... the Ask Trollbar... it's about time. :)

Chuck38 · 12 Jun 2015

badrobot said:

Oh... the Ask Trollbar... it's about time. :)

I know, right?

Phone Man · 12 Jun 2015

Its not over yet. Correction from original source link.

Correction: After this article was published, Microsoft clarified that the version of the Ask Toolbar it classifies as malware is not the current version. The latest version of the toolbar will not be banned by Microsoft as it does not contain search protection code. PCWorld regrets the error.

It's good that Ask ceased its troublesome behavior. Unfortunately, it looks like you'll still be manually uninstalling the Ask Toolbar for the foreseeable future. —Ed.

Jim

Edwin · 12 Jun 2015

Who uses toolbars anyway?
I thought toolbars were more surfing 'social butterflies' and, more or less, a thing of the past.

alphanumeric · 12 Jun 2015

In other news Ask Toolbar has been rebranded and redistributed as You asked for it toolbar. They will try to figure a way around the block.

I can remember when my step daughter got her first laptop. It didn't take long before there were a dozen or more toolbars in IE. She just assumed you had to accept the extras to get program X. She would just blindly keep clicking next etc to get her program installed as quick as possible. These types of drive by's count on that.

For most of us here, its just an inconvenience to watch out for it and uncheck the boxes.

alphanumeric · 12 Jun 2015

Edwin said:

Who uses toolbars anyway?
I thought toolbars were more surfing 'social butterflies' and, more or less, a thing of the past.

For us here yes. For the not so tech savvy, not so much. Most of my can you fix Windows for me, its so slow, instances are because its full of search toolbars etc and other drive by downloads. I just go right to control panel and start uninstalling the gunk. If it will uninstall that is.

f14tomcat · 12 Jun 2015

alphanumeric said:

For us here yes. For the not so tech savvy, not so much. Most of my can you fix Windows for me, its so slow, instances are because its full of search toolbars etc and other drive by downloads. I just go right to control panel and start uninstalling the gunk. If it will uninstall that is.

It's like trusting the "National Do Not Call" list. (ha-ha) You'll never stop them all.

BunnyJ · 12 Jun 2015

f14tomcat said:

It's like trusting the "National Do Not Call" list. (ha-ha) You'll never stop them all.

Or how about.. any. But I think the best way is to use malware bytes and hope that you can catch or clear up any issues when they should pop up.,