If you're seeing ads on Wikipedia, your computer probably has malware

Re:If you're seeing ads on Wikipedia, your computer probably... by encoderer on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @08:21PM (#3979686)

By that definition, websites that advertise are themselves malware.

If I make a toolbar that, I dunno, provides human-edited translations of Wikipedia articles that's active when you're on Wikipedia.com, and I monetize that by putting ads on the page, and a user downloaded and installed the app (as opposed to me paying to bundle it with another app) that is not malware.

Look, to the generally-non-technical audience that the original Wikipedia article had to write for, I think it's fair to cast a wide net and name all offending apps malware.

But here, amongst professionals in this industry, it's absurd to me to not see the nuance.

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Re:If you're seeing ads on Wikipedia, your computer probably... by JoshTriplett on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @09:01PM (#3979815)

> If I make a toolbar that, I dunno, provides human-edited translations of Wikipedia articles that's active when you're on Wikipedia.com, and I monetize that by putting ads on the page, and a user downloaded and installed the app (as opposed to me paying to bundle it with another app) that is not malware.

I agree that in that particular case it wouldn't necessarily qualify as malware, if you've made it clear to the user what you're doing. I would certainly call it adware, though.

And as you suggest, if you snuck it in along with some other application where the user didn't necessarily give clear and well-informed consent to install it, then I would absolutely call that malware.

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