{"id":3477,"date":"2002-11-13T06:40:56","date_gmt":"2002-11-13T11:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=3477"},"modified":"2002-11-13T06:40:56","modified_gmt":"2002-11-13T11:40:56","slug":"with_friends_li","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/11\/13\/with_friends_li.html","title":{"rendered":"With friends like these …"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click-thru licenses on software are an annoyance. Nobody reads them. The only thing they read is which button they need to click on — “Yes” or “OK” or “I accept” — so they can finish up installing whatever it is they want.<\/p>\n

Problem is, that means you accept whatever is in there, and basically give them permission to do whatever they want to your computer, no more questions asked. <\/p>\n

Which may be problematic but likely not too <\/i>bad a thing when you’re talking about the latest gammaware from Micro$oft, but quite another when you are accepting a license from FriendGreetings, and the agreement allows their software to send an e-mail out to everyone in your contact list, inviting them to join FriendGreetings, too.<\/p>\n

Of course, that provision is hidden away in the lengthy license, but, hey, you “signed” it, right?<\/a><\/p>\n

The most insidious aspect to this is that, because you agreed to it, the anti-virus software manufacturers need to be very, very careful about their reaction to it. Folks are clamoring for Symantec and Network Associates to upgrade their software to block this “Trojan Horse,” but the AV companies know that they could get sued by FriendGreetings if they are too vigorous in their efforts to block what is, technically, a legitimate, user-accepted piece of software.<\/p>\n

The bottom line? Don’t accept software downloads that you are not certain of, or where you don’t know the company involved. That seems obvious, but with click-through licenses reaching the level of background noise, it’s a caution worth restating at least one more time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click-thru licenses on software are an annoyance. Nobody reads them. The only thing they read is which button they need to click on — “Yes” or “OK” or “I accept”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hi-tech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7250,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/04\/15\/chain_of_custod.html","url_meta":{"origin":3477,"position":0},"title":"Chain of custody","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 15-Apr-05 10:20am","format":false,"excerpt":"There's an old saying that you're not just having sex with a particular person, but with all the people that person has had sex with. 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That's all the tiny fine print in a...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131802,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/10\/15\/john-scalzi-endorses-hillary-clinton-better-than-i-could.html","url_meta":{"origin":3477,"position":2},"title":"John Scalzi endorses Hillary Clinton (better than I could)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 15-Oct-16 4:59pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Why the heck should you care who John Scalzi is or who he's voting for? Per se, for no reason. He's a great SF author, though that really, truly doesn't mean anything pro or con regarding his political acumen. But he articulates all the reasons I am going to be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27449,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/04\/18\/patent-impatience.html","url_meta":{"origin":3477,"position":3},"title":"Patent Impatience","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 18-Apr-12 1:54pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Patents are an important way of encouraging innovation by trying to guarantee some return on intellectual investment: come up with an new, innovative idea, patent it, and your idea is protected for a period of time to let you license it, use it, sell it, whatever.All of which is keen,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8613,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/09\/27\/having_their_ca.html","url_meta":{"origin":3477,"position":4},"title":"Having their cake and eating it, too","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 27-Sep-05 2:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"If, as most software companies assert, they are not really selling us the software, but only a license to use it, and thus can place all sorts of limitations on...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11359,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/09\/13\/law_suit_over_shrink_wrap.html","url_meta":{"origin":3477,"position":5},"title":"Law suit over shrink-wrap licensing","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 13-Sep-07 10:31am","format":false,"excerpt":"Most folks don't realize that most of the software you buy ... you aren't really buying.\u00a0 You're licensing it.\u00a0 Yeah, sure, you have the disks and the manuals and all,...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}