quote:
Originally posted by alegator
Of course, I'm not afraid of Plus!, I think it's a great program and gave me the option to refuse sponsor programs during install, so I'm surprised by the above rating it received.
Well, as you pointed out, the sponsor program can be choosen to be installed or not during the setup.
Also, the sponsor program is a heavly stripped down version of what antispyware programs catalogged as spyware. Such programs do not make a destinction between types of such packages. For all they care, if it comes from a certain vendor it is automatically catalogged as being spyware, just because that vendor had a bad reputation in the past, even if it is just currently adware. And even if that vendor has stripped down all of its current sponsor packages by now.
In the end, I'm not quite surprised it is detected like that. Because as long as this sponsor is used, there will always be one antispyware program or the other which would incorrectly flag it as spyware. The term spyware is quite often used too easley/loosely by such anti-whatever programs (and even sometimes by experts), unfortunatly.
Though, do not worry, Messenger Plus! itself is not spyware, not even adware by any definition of the terms. If the sponsor is not installed, not a single bit of adware or anything like that will be installed on your computer, ever...
The sponsor, which is adware, is only installed if you choose it to be and can be uninstalled at any time (again two things which true spyware wouldn't allow you to do).
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If one does some proper unbiased research, you'll see that there are some inaccuracies on that page you linked to:
1)
It come bundled with the swizzor trojan as a "sponsor" program.
Although the sponsor program has the same signature as the swizzor trajon, it is not. The swizzor trojan was originally detected as "Adware-Lop" ('Lop' being the company which provides this sponsor). And because it is still this company which provides this sponsor and no destinction is made in the levels of packages that company provided, it is still detected as the swizzor trojan, eventhough the true spyware nature which lead to this trojan definition is long gone (note: the sponsor in Plus! never was that severe spyware package which that company also could provide in the past; it always was a majorly stripped down, only ad-showing, package).
2)
The author had his MVP status revoked as a result of his association with well known spyware merchants.
It wasn't actually revoked. His _active_ MVP status was revoked because some other MVPs didn't agree with him being an MVP because he used a sponsor package from Lop (although severely stripped down and with a clearly visible choice to the user to install it or not).
To quote Microsoft, the award itself was given to him "on the basis of his technical expertise and strong community contribution". He has received his MVP certificate as well as all the associated gifts like every other MVP.
He has a very good relationship with Microsoft and the Windows Live Messenger team too.
He only doesn't have access to the MVP-only newsgroups this year and he can't display the MVP logo if he wanted.
3)
Uses excessive system resources
That's a very biased observation to begin with. Nevertheless, for this particular case, the sponsor, it does not require any "excessive" resources. Of course, your PC will be slower when you install the sponsor. But then again, it will perform slower when you start any program for that matter. The differences on performances on an average not-so-up-to-date computer between installing the sponsor and not installing it is nihil.
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Thanks for notifying this though...
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