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September 13, 2005

Ask Wants Anti-Spyware Companies To Lift Warnings

Spotted via Threadwatch, Ask Jeeves Disputes Anti-Spyware Flaggings from eWeek looks at Ask Jeeves asking at least two anti-spyware companies to stop flagging Ask's software with warnings. The companies have apparently refused to do so. Once calls Ask products "potentially unwanted" rather than flagging them as "spyware" or "adware." Bundling issues were raised as a main concern for pushback by the companies. IE, the software itself may be fine, but the companies see problems with how it gets out to users. The story notes that other spyware detection tools such as those from Microsoft and Lavasoft don't flag Ask's products.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:11 PM | Permalink

June 27, 2005

Ask Jeeves Names Online Compliance Officer

Today, Ask Jeeves appointed Steven Pickering to the newly created position of Online Compliance Officer.

[Pickering] will focus primarily on overseeing the Company's Fun Web Products and family of My Search toolbars on a variety of online consumer issues including online privacy, disclosure, and downloadable software practices.

More about today's announcement in this news release.

About two months ago, accusations about software distributed by Ask Jeeves also installing adware, made headlines. The company denied these charges in a letter to Danny.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:45 PM | Permalink

May 2, 2005

Ask Jeeves Denies Adware Installing Charge & Other Accusations

Earlier I posted about various accusations made against software distributed by Ask Jeeves -- that it assisted other programs to install themselves unbeknownst to users, that it was tagged as spyware by Microsoft's anti-spyware tool and that it generated log referral spam. Ask Jeeves has responded to deny the accusations. John Park, senior vice president for desktop products at Ask Jeeves, emailed the following:

Ask Jeeves' toolbar products, including My Search and Fun Web Products, are not spyware or adware. Our products do not collect personal information, do not monitor the sites a user visits, do not monitor a user?s behavior on the Internet, do not log or track keystrokes and do not serve or facilitate contextual or pop-up ads. We also do not generate log referral spam. Anti-spyware/anti-adware programs do not flag us, including those from Microsoft, AOL, Norton, McAfee, Symantec and a long list of others.

Since Ask Jeeves acquired ISH we have been working diligently to follow the developing industry best practices with respect to spyware, adware and consumer disclosure. We don't allow our programs to be installed without permission or consent. We take clarity very seriously and even include a visual image of what the Fun Web Product application looks like on the install page (viewed prior to install) to make it perfectly clear what a user will see when they download our product. From what we have seen, this takes disclosure a step beyond the practices implemented by others in the industry.

The area of downloadable applications is rapidly growing and industry best practices will continue to be refined. Consumer and industry feedback continues to be critical as we work to weed out the bad apples ? it?s bad for the consumer and ultimately for business. In [Ben Edelman's] video he highlights an advertising affiliate that installed our toolbar through an unacceptable practice known in the industry as drive-by downloads.

We don?t endorse that activity and explicitly call this out as off-limits in our contracts. We terminated the relationship when it came to our attention. We want consumers to download our toolbars for the great functionality we offer and the volume of decidedly positive feedback combined with the millions of active users who have sent over 1 billion smileys to date seems to indicate people are doing just that.

We will continue to evolve our products in line with industry standards and appreciate the user and industry feedback that helps make our products better.

In my earlier post, I'd mentioned personally seeing one of Ask Jeeves' products flagged as spyware by Microsoft's detection tool. Had things changed since the end of February. Yes, Park responded.

You will see with the latest definition files that we are not flagged by Microsoft or any of the other products that are mentioned below. I personally checked the latest install from Microsoft this evening.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:47 PM | Permalink

Ask Jeeves Accused Of Pushing Adware

Anti-spyware writer Ben Edelman pokes at Ask Jeeves in his Does Jeeves Ask for Permission? article up today. He finds that the Ask Jeeves My Way and My Search software also installed programs without permission or consent.

These were programs gained by Ask Jeeves through its acquisition of Interactive Search Holdings last year. They've had a long history of similar acquisitions before the purchase, but it was something that Ask Jeeves denied. From our article about the purchase, Ask Jeeves: Why Buy Interactive Search Holdings:

Rumors that Interactive Search Holdings search toolbars contained adware or spyware have dogged the company for years. [Ask Jeeves CEO Steve] Berkowitz denies that current versions of the toolbars contain spyware, though he acknowledges that there were problems with policies of early distribution partners.

"[Interactive Search Holdings] policies are extremely clean," he said. "They're working very very hard to clean this stuff up. These guys don't even do an automatic update. They've spent a lot of time working with the spyware companies to make sure that they're not considered spyware."

The issue came up again earlier this year in the Is Ask Jeeves Behind Browser Hijackers? on the martinibuster blog, where the Ask tools were accused of generating log referral spam. The issue of them being spyware was raised as part of that.

I had a message out to Ask Jeeves about this at the end of February, because not long after seeing the post above, I noticed that the new Windows AntiSpyware tool had spotted my installation of one of the Ask tools and came back with a message calling MyWebSearch a "Toolbar Browser Hijacker" that installs adware, spyware and changes browser settings.

I was told MSN was supposedly clearing Ask Jeeves of these accusations but hadn't had a chance to follow up further. I've sent a message out for an update and comment about these new accusations.

Edelman also makes criticisms about the Ask Jeeves toolbar being pitched at kids and poor disclosure in a separate article: Ask Jeeves Toolbar Installs via Banner Ads at Kids Sites.

Postscript: Ask Jeeves has denied the accusations. See the Ask Jeeves Denies Spyware Charge & Other Accusations follow-up post.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:00 PM | Permalink

April 11, 2005

Ask Jeeves Enhances MyJeeves; Tagging Option Added

Ask Jeeves has just released an upgrade to their MyJeeves personalized search tool that Ask.com launched last September.

New for MyJeeves users are several enhancements including:

+ An option to add your own "tags" to any item. To do this, save an image or web page and then click the "modify" link next to the entry on your MyJeeves "Save Results" pages. You'll then find a box labeled "tags" to add your metadata.

+ My Jeeves integration into the Ask Jeeves Toolbar. In other words, save any web page without having first find it from an AJ web results page. Big improvement! + Save images into My Jeeves from any web page (right-click) or directly from an AJ Image Search results page.

+ Important your bookmarks from IE and Firefox into MyJeeves

+ Organize your saved material into hierarchical folders.

Btw, MyJeeves is still not permanently caching pages. Other services like Filangy Nextaris, and Furl do offer a local cache option and then allow you to search the full text of these pages. I hope the next round of MyJeeves enhancements includes this feature as an option.

A tour of the new MyJeeves services is online here with more in the news release.

MyJeeves is also available from: + Ask Jeeves Spain + Ask Jeeves Japan + Ask Jeeves UK

Posted by Gary Price at 10:15 AM | Permalink

March 16, 2005

New Firefox Toolbar from Ask Jeeves

A post on the Ask Jeeves Blog informs us that the company is now offering a version of the AJ Toolbar for Firefox users.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:43 PM | Permalink

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