Is Zwinky Spyware?

July 16, 2007

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Today I decided to check out Zwinky.com to get a feel for it and how it works. To start, I had to sign up - which I was expecting - however what I wasn’t expecting was to do anything in this virtual world I had to download “add on” programs.Zwinky Spyware

Feeling a little too lazy to sift through a 21 page user agreement, and curious to the detriment of my downloads, I discovered an article by The Media Desk that points out that once the Zwinky is installed, the MyWebSearch toolbar is installed. Zwinky tells you this in the agreement. But what they don’t tell you is that this toolbar collects personal information through tracking cookies and pixel tags, which allows the company to see where you came from, what you do on the web, and how long you stay there.

Yes - this is spyware. And those harmless emoticons are installed automatically without a user’s knowledge are what’s known as malware. Put on without your knowledge, and sometimes more harmful to uninstall.

Humorously enough, Zwinky states the following:

“We hate adware and spyware as much as you do. Toolbar companies that sneak these annoyances into their downloads hurt the reputation of every company that provides a free toolbar for download. Rest assured, we only provide fun features on our toolbar”

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Posted by Lisa Braziel | Filed Under Social Media News, Blog, Social Networking, News 

Comments

7 Responses to “Is Zwinky Spyware?”

  1. Jim Deep on August 3rd, 2007 2:55 pm

    Your link didn’t work to the source article.

    Jim

  2. lmcneill on August 3rd, 2007 3:21 pm

    It should be fixed. Thanks for the catch!

  3. GhettoClock on October 24th, 2007 6:15 pm

    just before I installed zwinky, i read this. thanks so much for the help!

  4. Lisa McNeill on October 25th, 2007 7:05 am

    Good to hear that it helped :-)

  5. Zwinky.scam on January 7th, 2008 2:10 pm

    wow - what a waste of time - and a bit hard to get off my system. it would be great if I was under 12 years old AND had SPYWARE and MALWARE and ANTIVIRUS sitting behinde one or two firewalls and i didn’t care if the whole world knew where and when I went on the internet - amongst other thing….ok in short VERY LAME!

  6. Is Fox Sports Doing a Link "Bait & Switch" : Ignite Social Media: The original social media agency on February 4th, 2008 10:03 pm

    […] seem to let you start any sort of blog, let alone a Fox Sports blog. Online games, ads for Zwinky (which is spyware in our view) and a bunch of other […]

  7. Colin Daniels on March 17th, 2008 12:36 pm

    thats not spyware to look for pedifiles

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