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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

So when earlier it was mentioned, I assumed "They have to have a different angle on this; they're a YC company." And seeing a strong thread title and no evidence for it other than "The industry they're in is ridiculously seedy", I thought maybe HN was in rush to judgement mode.

So I thought I'd try, you know, installing something.

Make your own call:

http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/its-not-a...

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I took a look at your image and started a search for Babylon Browser. Autofill added stuff like "hijack" and "took over my browser".

Sounds like very bad news:

https://www.google.com/search?q=babylon+browser

I can confirm that it is tenacious.

I don't know how since I always check for crapware, but I ended up with babylon having taken over my firefox browser. I removed it, but - just checking - oh look, there it is again.

Luckily, chrome is my go-to browser, (which explains why I haven't tried more brutal removals), but it is definitely not as simple as uninstalling.

It seems to be worse than I thought. http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/938607

Jeez, I'm surprised that the people who created this filth aren't in prison. It's one TINY step away from botnet territory, which actually lands people in prison.

Botnets don't usually include a low-prominence opt-out link / checkbox / something that might not look quite like a button. Maybe they'd walk free if they did...

That is really interesting. What are the legal implications of using a computer in a botnet if the owner of that computer agrees to a EULA, I wonder?

Edit: I should say, "agrees" to it (unknowingly).

Folding@Home seems to do alright. As does Bitcoin.

Looks like even clicking on "Decline" does still made you prone to tracking from them. The excuse given in the answer is also pretty poor: http://i.imgur.com/FpjFp.png (permalink: http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/installmonetizer.com/comme...)

Wow! Defaulting the easy revert option to unchecked is the perfect kicker. It's like a cartoon villain curling his mustache.

The wording on that choice is incredible too.

Comment in elaboration, somewhat delayed because (all evidence to the contrary) I do sleep sometimes:

Some folks mentioned that this could be misleading, so to clarify: my research methodology, to the extent it can be called that, was a) open up the IM website, b) take a look at their advertiser partner wall (they don't have a developer partner wall, so I wasn't able to view the end-user experience directly), c) Google the first name that popped out: [babylon translation software], d) clicked the first link and downloaded, e) clicked past the first screen, which let me override my system default of Japanese such that y'all would be able to read the rest of the installer, where industry experience suggested to me that the action would be.

Sorry if I gave folks the impression that this was the InstallMonetizer application -- the impression I was trying to leave was "This is the core line of business for one of their marquis advertisers."

It is terrifying that it is this easy to get an intelligent and well-versed member of our community to download and execute a relatively-unknown binary, just to "see what it does".

I should probably start doing more of that other kind of hacking.

It makes me a little sad when I remember what pg aways say to startups. Make something users love.

Not this time, though...

The users aren't the people installing the software. The users are the clowns writing the software that is so horrible it needs to pay for installs.

And those users will love this new attack vector backed by some of the most respected folk in Silicon Valley.

It looks like Install Monetizer was previously known (or is also known?) as Optilly.

http://optilly.com/

http://www.installmonetizer.com/

Maybe they "pivoted" from a clever take on ad campaign management to toolbars as a way to increase revenues?

It's funny that you mention Babylon - I've talked to one of the devs who was in the core of developing their "toolbar" and it is essentially malware which hooks anything and everything possible in Windows and tries its best not to give up when being uninstalled.

Things like it and Conduit (another toolbar/malware company) are probably the biggest "botnets" out there, all "legal".

My favourite part is how, by default, it won't even save your old settings for un-installation. Nice.

"They have to have a different angle on this; they're a YC company."

Why do you think they would have a different angle if they are a YC company?

I don't think there's an implication that a YC company would be more moral, just that they'd be doing something a little more interesting or subtle than the same old crap sleaze balls have been pulling for years now.

It's like finding that someone has got through the YC selection process based on a business model which involves putting "sex, horny, porn" in the title of each page on their website.

http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html

That rings kind of hollow after Blecharczyk ("among the nicest of all the people we've funded") was outed as an unrepentant habitual spammer. YC is demonstrably not immune to scumbags, which is not to say that other angels and VCs do better.

(For those who'd have to look it up: this refers to AirBnb.)

From PG's article:

"Microsoft isn't so benevolent now. Now when one thinks of what Microsoft does to users, all the verbs that come to mind begin with F."

This is why it's easy to cast YC's funding of a crapware company as a deliberate choice.

Presumably it's hard to get into YC without a "different angle".

"Its about the team, not the idea".

So this is potentially a little misleading. Is the screen shot of the installer actually a screenshot of InstallMonetizer in action, or is it just an existing / previous installer created by one of their clients (but not using InstallMonetizer).

I'm not a fan regardless, but I just wanted to make sure we're getting the right picture here. I came away from your comment believing this was a screen from their (InstallMonetizer's) actual installer, and I think everyone else did too. However, after reading pg's comment below, I'm no longer so sure that is the case.

Can you please clarify?

The installer screenshot seems to be for the software at http://www.babylon.com/. I think Patrick's point was that InstallMonetizer is promoting some scuzzy companies.

Great file name.

But yeah, these people really chose to do evil, in a shady business. Why? Why not start the next scientology, that would make them more money.

The sad fact is that pretty much every aspect of monetizing and advertising websites is seedy. Unless you're directly selling a product, the road to profitability is full of moral compromises.

There's isn't even a cancel button! Hopefully at least the top right X cancels the installation rather than just respawning the popup and requiring manual killing from task manager.

It pops a modal dialog saying that if you cancel the software won't get to be installed. I don't have a screenshot handy, but I get the feeling it was worded a bit verbosely to prevent people from guessing the correct of the two buttons to actually stop the install. If you pick the right button, your default browser gets force-directed to a page on their site to either a) re-start the download and install process or b) send a message to their CS team so that they can assist you with installing it. (I've got to admit, that is crafty, since you can presumably do the entire thing automatically.)

No, and notice the small "Skip all offers" text just below the checkboxes, it's kind of hidden between everything and difficult to see. It took me a while to figure that one out, average users have no chance!

My parents have fallen for this sort of thing within days of getting a new computer. It's so hard to get rid of and it made them feel like they were downloading viruses when they were really downloading legitimate software. It's a shame you've ended up having to do stuff like this when you are performing what should be, totally secure installs.

Babylon is the worst of the worst malware. I've never battled tooth and nail to get such supervirus crapware off my computer in my life.

Seriously, stay away!

The original Babylon Translator, with the One Click Translation of words in the screen was a very nice and useful product. It's a pity that they pivoted to the toolbar crapware thing.

Probably were no longer making any money when people could translate (safely) all from within Google Chrome!

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