Three cheers for Symantec! As I reported recently, malware companies have been on the offensive against anti-malware companies, trying to threaten, cajole, and sweet-talk anti-malware companies into not labeling their wretched products as "adware" and "spyware."According to News.com, after months of going 'round and 'round with adware maker Hotbar (whose insidious and unwanted "toolbar" I have removed from more than a few friends' computers), Symantec finally tired of Hotbar's bellicose bloviations and filed a lawsuit seeking the right to label Hotbar's adware as, well, adware.
"We have been talking with (Hotbar) for the last several months, and over the course of that time, they have threatened to sue us on a regular basis," [Symantec spokesman Cris] Paden said. ... Symantec said it is not asking for money, but is seeking an affirmation that Hotbar products are indeed adware and can be treated as security risks. "We are simply asking for the judge to say that we are within our rights to detect Hotbar," Paden said. The company would then be able to help customers remove the toolbars from their PCs.
The News.com article goes on to discuss several other anti-spyware companies who are also being threatened by the Hotbar hotheads. Meanwhile, Hotbar is apparently unlawfully representing itself as a licensee of the TRUSTe privacy program. When you click on the TRUSTe logo, it says:
www.hotbar.com IS NOT A VALID TRUSTe MEMBER WEB SITEThe unauthorized display of the TRUSTe trustmark is unlawful and violates a TRUSTe trademark. If you clicked on the TRUSTe trustmark or Click to Verify seal to get to this page, the site you are visiting does not have permission to display the seal.
I applaud Symantec for standing up to the petulant twits at Hotbar, and more importantly, for seeking a legal precedent that would potentially establish a legal right to call a spade a spade. Hopefully Symantec's discovery of a backbone will inspire McAfee and other anti-malware companies to stand up to the malware industry's Jedi Mind Tricks.Meanwhile, the message to Hotbar is simple. When you're in the malware business, you have to expect that when you depend on bullying tactics, one day you're going to bully somebody bigger than you, and get yourself smacked right back. In my opinion, Hotbar should shut up and take their lumps like a grown-up. Like their cousins in the spam industry, the malware companies need to accept that there are more people gunning for them than there are ethically-challenged marketers to keep hiring them. The tide is shifting, and this market isn't going to be a hospitable place to peddle that 'ware for much longer.Unless you're prepared to set up shop in China or some other nation where enough money will buy you a secure homebase for businesses built on shaky moral grounds, it's time for malware vendors to accept that the golden age of malware may be drawing to a close. Certainly we're not there yet, but as Spyware Warrior notes, vast numbers of people are trying to get rid of malware. If it hasn't already, the uninstall rate will eventually surpass the install rate of malware, despite the increasingly desperate techniques some malware companies are using.Sorry Hotbar! You had a good run. But as Symantec knows, there's more profit to be had in erasing your products than playing word games to protect them.