[answered]Alexa

Alexa is a company owned by Amazon. It has a toolbar that one can download if they want their web use to be collected in agregate.

I do not consider it "spyware" because the use of teh toolbar is straight forward. You only get teh toolbar if you download it and they do not ever try to sneak it on you like other spyware does.

It's also not something that performs actions that personally identify people and it doesn't prevent you from uninstalling or anything.

Now many paranoid folk mislabel "spyware". The programs used to catch real spyware are in a competition for whose program is more "complete" so they add things that are not spyware or things that are borderline to beef up their definitions.

Some people do indeed consider Alexa and the Google toolbar (with advenaced features) to be spyware.

I do not.

Furthermore they are not dangerous and you will only have them installed if you go to their sites and install them.

What you saw was an overzealous program blocking some advertisement by Alexa or Amazon.

They notoriouslty give false positives with Alexa.

Windows comes with a file named Alexa on your computer, even people who heve never ever seen an Alexa ad have false alarms about it.

In this case your program is bing ridiculous. It's trying to show you how well it is protecting you.

Firewalls and security programs often fall prey to this. They paint the internet as this great scarey place because they want to peddle their wares and then they have to maintain the illusion by showing all the stuff that they "block".

It's ridiculous. What this "blocked" was simply a banner ad for a program that experienced users rarely even consider spyware, much less dangerous. And nobody thinks just seeing the banner is dangerous.

These types of companies make paranoid people.

Hi, I have always held Alexa to be suspicious and therefore don't want it.
Does that mean if I am to remain here I am going to have running battles with Alexa, it has no right to be on my computer.
I do know it has always been one of the "doubtfulls" but I didn't expect to be doing battle with it here of all places.
I wanted to post this through "contact" but was guided here.
With my security settings there are some sites will not load, if the computer refuses it that is good enough for me. Regards.

smoking,

No you will need no "battles" with Alexa. Even with no security settings whatsoever the Alexa toolbar is not something that will install itself.

To get the toolbar one must go to their site and download it after agreeing to their terms.

Like I said, your software is just trying to show you how good of a job it's doing by making a dragon for it to kill.

Seeing a banner that advertises Alexa cané change anything on your computer.

None of the banners I run here will download any program. I would not use a site that did this and I would not make one either.

BTW, this is just for fun but it's true (I like to bug any paranoid readers out there): Windows comes with a component of Alexa.

He he he, that ought to scare some of the people who claim the NSA has a "key" to their computer.

No kidding? I'll bite - what is it?

It's just a file that specifies the use of the Alexa online search engine for "related searches".

Many programs used to detect "spyware" give a false positive for Alexa because of this file. AdAware will for example because it's signature method is horrible. I bet if you rename another file with alexa in it anywhere it will flag it.

The file is not even part of Alexa software, it's just the setting for the default online "related search" in IE.

It was removed within hours of being in my hands, I know about Windows
including it. I was unfortunate enough to have Real as well, all gone.
About NSA and those stories well you know !!!

Why? Do you even know why you are treating it like a disease? The component that ships with Windows simply has no downside. I'm not even saying it's not "dangerous" but that there is no way it can be construed as having a downside at all.

Hi, as I mentioned above it is one of the doubtfulls and I prefer to be without it. I think almost every security site on the net talk about it and I am with a few of them because I take an interest in that stuff.
It is one of the border line cases.

Yeah, but even if the toolbar is something you don't want the windows component is just a link to their site. There is no way the windows component can compromise you.

Anywho, it's no biggie, but the misperceptions that are forwarded about computers does bother me and hurts more than helps.

In addition to everything Craven's said about how Alexa is not "dangerous" at all, I'd like to add that the Alexa toolbar is very useful. There's no game in town that competes with its traffic info, and its site reviews & related sites listings are great. I've got it on every PC I use.

It's odd that it's called "spyware". Any toolbar that shows information about teh site being visited NEEDS to send a request for information about that site to the information provider.

Google's toolbar does this to show you the page rank for the page you are visiting. Alexa does this to show the site's popularity etc.

I reserve the name "spyware" for programs that sneak in (either through a bundled download or an even sneakier method) and that use you without giving in return.

The scumware I speak of doesn't call out for reasons you are aware of and want, it does it to serve you advertisements etc.

Google and Alexa get a bum rap (Google less so than Alexa but Google's toolbar does the same thing as Alexa) and that's sad, because there is real spyware and scumware out there that do not play clean. Alexa and Google do.

I too, have it on every computer I use. You can turn it on and off with a click and I use it when I want it.