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Tech: Microsoft making (more) spyware?
Thu, 07 Jul 2005

For purposes of this post, lets gloss over the fact that Windows Updater passes details about your machine hardware and installed software up to Microsoft (you can debate until the end of time if they will abuse it or not, noting that the EULA permits them to silently uninstall anything they like..) and cut to todays chase. Relatively recently, Microsoft started working on buying Claria, a 'direct internet marketing company' -- a company you likely know better by the name of Gator (recently renamed) who makes pop-up ads and software to track which websites you go to. Gator have been a pretty disreputable bunch, with such wonderful tactics as tricking Internet Explorer (a very wide open browser.. try Firefox instead!) into silently downloading and installing software that does all sorts of terrible things, and is pretty hard to remove (generally needing commercial anti-spyware software to remove it.)

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