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Foxit installs Ask.com toolbar, even with opt-out

M

mav451

Senior member
So yeah fresh Win7 install, I go with trusty Foxit.

Nope, even with opt-out, I noticed that Ask.com toolbar was installed. Guess I'll be looking for an alternative now. It's too bad, since I thought Foxit was above this kind of nonsense.
 
Strange, I did a fresh Win7 install on my laptop about 6 weeks ago, installed Foxit, opted out of the ask toolbar and no issues.
 
You can always go to Add / Remove Programs and uninstall Ask.com toolbar or most anything. For a toolbar, you should first disable it in the web browsers.
 
I've noticed this happening on my machines as well. Opt out of it, and it still adds. Reminds me of daemon tools and their like 4 different checkboxes to add crap to your machine :\
 
bruceb said:
You can always go to Add / Remove Programs and uninstall Ask.com toolbar or most anything. For a toolbar, you should first disable it in the web browsers.
Click to expand...

Yeah I've removed it already. I'm amazed that it passed through UAC/MSE with no warnings at all. But yeah, I always uncheck it, so I'm trying not to be insulted by those post above that are suggesting I forgot to.
 
I saw it today or last night too... it said something about Foxit and it was the ask.com search engine. Not sure how that came to be.
 
they gotta make money somehow 😛

I remember when it was a good thing to install toolbars for IE waaayyyy back in the day as they'd often block popups and be thus actually be useful instead of redundant and cluttering.
 
I think (not certain) that VLC player pulls the same trick of installing Ask.com toolbar.
A few other programs also add crap like that. You must slow down for each installer screen, not just keep clicking "enter" or that crap gets installed. And to make matters worse, it adds to the download file size and it is usually a toolbar I don't want or need. I only install Google Toolbar.
 
I installed it on my laptop last week and it didn't install Ask.com toolbar. I don't remember, but did it ask to change the homepage of the browser AND to install the toolbar?

Also, can you extract the contents of the Foxit installer and just delete the Ask.com stuff before installing Foxit?
 
If Ask.com is doing (imho) bad things DO NOT USE Ask.com or it's toolbar. Stop and write them a letter why. Enough letters and someone will take notice.
 
crappy they don't give an opt out. i just install foxit like normal and uninstall the ask toolbar afterward. takes an extra 1 minute but foxit is worth it
 
bruceb said:
I think (not certain) that VLC player pulls the same trick of installing Ask.com toolbar.
A few other programs also add crap like that. You must slow down for each installer screen, not just keep clicking "enter" or that crap gets installed. And to make matters worse, it adds to the download file size and it is usually a toolbar I don't want or need. I only install Google Toolbar.
Click to expand...

Yeah VLC was something else (another search engine/toolbar). I'm just wondering if all these free alternatives will start going off the way-side if the economy never picks up? I mean both VLC and Foxit recently have included the opt-out options. But I have a feeling that some builds (like the recent Foxit build) are bugged so even if you untick the option, it installs anyway.

It's fucking depressing to be honest.
 
mav451 said:
Yeah VLC was something else (another search engine/toolbar). I'm just wondering if all these free alternatives will start going off the way-side if the economy never picks up? I mean both VLC and Foxit recently have included the opt-out options. But I have a feeling that some builds (like the recent Foxit build) are bugged so even if you untick the option, it installs anyway.

It's fucking depressing to be honest.
Click to expand...

VLC is open source. If you don't like it, it can be changed. As far as Foxit goes, I've never had an issue with it installing toolbars without permission. Even if it did, the hassle of uninstalling a toolbar once far out weighs the rage inducing act of opening Acrobat every time you want to view a pdf.
 
Yeah I just downloaded VLC at work to see if there was a toolbar install. There was none!
I manually selected a Texas, US mirror this time however (where as I just let it auto-dl last time).

Yeah as for PDFs, I'm kind of stuck between a rock and a hard-place on that. I may just use one of the super-old Foxit installs from my XP machine (probably a 3-year old installer).
 
Foxit is increasingly becoming more bloated in any case. I've stayed on the old 1.3 version since the newer ones have slow and choppy scrolling with some kinds of documents. The old version has a few other issues though.
 
mav451 said:
So yeah fresh Win7 install, I go with trusty Foxit.

Nope, even with opt-out, I noticed that Ask.com toolbar was installed. Guess I'll be looking for an alternative now. It's too bad, since I thought Foxit was above this kind of nonsense.
Click to expand...

No, it doesn't.

You deselected the Ask.com search and homepage, but clicked "Accept" instead of "Decline".

Slow down next time and read what you're doing before posting a thread with false information.
 
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