Let's call this what it is. Not malware, just crapware.
Every service you sign up for, everything you install for free (minus some open-source stuff), offers you something, and defaults to yes. You have to un-check boxes to send you emails, to install crap, to agree to performance tracking, etc... If I don't like the terms of something, I simply don't use it. That's why I'm on Linux, Ubuntu to be precise (and I opted out of the Amazon lens - not because I hate it, but because I simply don't buy that much stuff from Amazon).
No. Crapware is some stupid program you should be able to uninstall via Control Panel (Windows) or drag from the App folder into Trash (Mac)
Anything for which the uninstall instructions (I define uninstall as 'completely remove everything related to this from my computer') go:
[To change the 404 error page]:
- Go to the Firefox folder: open Finder and navigate to Applications and right click on firefox.app
- Select MacOS, and delete the MACSearchTakeOver.js file (wtf?)
- Go to the folder Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/CHOOSEActiveProfile. Note, USERNAME = your username. CHOOSEActiveProfile will be a unique name, for example "6y5m281v.default"
- Delete the file called abstraction.js
is malware.
There is no way in hell a regular user should be expected to do that.
You notice I didn't say anything about Ubuntu -- by and large (apart from the Amazon Lens debacle), these crap/malware peddlers have left Linux alone. How would you feel if you had to edit xorg.conf or something manually because some package you installed from someone's PPA made your screen display ads every 15 minutes? :P
Conduit is malware. They go out of their way to make their software difficult to remove. If the only way to get something off your computer is malwarebytes, it's malware.
Every service you sign up for, everything you install for free (minus some open-source stuff), offers you something, and defaults to yes. You have to un-check boxes to send you emails, to install crap, to agree to performance tracking, etc... If I don't like the terms of something, I simply don't use it. That's why I'm on Linux, Ubuntu to be precise (and I opted out of the Amazon lens - not because I hate it, but because I simply don't buy that much stuff from Amazon).