On Dec 6, 2011, at 1:38 PM, Andrew S. Zbikowski wrote: > In this case, malware is the incorrect term. It's not malware that is > out to be malicious, it's extra bundled crapware that pays money back > to the distributer who got you to install it. Every vendor IE toolbars > does it, even some OSS software packages include some of this in their > official installers to offset some of their out of pocket costs for > providing free software. The software is legitimate in that it's > produced by Microsoft, Google, or other software vendors, it's just > crap that you didn't really want and probably wouldn't have installed > had you been paying attention to the installer. > > The bad part of this is C|Net is adding this to the official > installers without the content of the original packager. I'm sure if > you were paying attention you would realize that you're downloading > C|net's "installer" that installs the crapware, then downloads and > installs the official package for you. Very disrespectful on C|Net's > part for doing this. It's not like they don't already have enough > misleading "download" links and advertisements on the download.com > site, but still not malware in my opinion. The word you're looking for is "bloatware".