What Makes Adware "Adware"?

[Hova_19]

Does including a sponser with ads make it adware? There is a heated discussion (among mostly kids) at the messenger plus forums. If you downloaded that, you probably have noticed they have lop.com as a sponser. Yet its still called freeware. Does it lose its "freeware" status because it uses a sponser, thus making it adware?

[Krell]

Good thread Hova, in my opinion, It makes it the worst kind of Adware.

Spying and browser hijacks should be illegal.

[vipp]

Oh man, lop is the worst! I had it once, loooong ago, and it scared the shit outa me.

Now I have ad-watch running, plus I've set the immunize in Spybot. Bring it on you jerks! I'm ready! Mwhahahaah!!

Yup!

[ozamosi]

um... the sponsor-progg is the adware (the same thing with spyware, scumware and so on). so lop.com is the adware. And messenger plus is freeware since its free of charge. thats what i think.

[rainbowdemon]

Before I knew much about spyware, I ended up with lop.com somehow. It kept changing my homepage. I agree with Krell, this type of sh*t should be illegal!!! I also run spybot S&D, with the immunize feature on now.

[TheIceMan]

For me it is not really an issue , sure i use 1 or 2 freeware programs (such as emule etc) but 99.99% of all my software is cracked ,from the operating system upwards , i have always cracked software so that i generally get the best software available or iso's of the full retail versions - its child's play - at least that way the chances of there being embedded scumware are minute.I have never paid for any software apart from windows 3.1 years ago but since then never.

[crazycaleb]

With messenger plus you get the option of not installing that stuff though, right? The last time I installed MPlus I had that option anyway. So I suppose it's ad-supported software, but you have a choice in the matter.