No Bull Webmastering

On my upstairs laptop, I use Trillian to access the IM portion of being an adult webmaster. On my main desktop, downstairs, I have ICQ. Recently the blasted program upgraded to a new version, and the trials & tribulations began.

ICQ IS A HORRIBLE SPYWARE RIDDLED PIECE OF CRAP.

There, I feel better. Now don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a bad Instant Messaging (IM) program, just that it is not what I can security friendly. To begin with, it wants to be like Google, to have all the little side things Google has, including a toolbar, and search etc.

When I get software, I want to decide what gets installed, what added features to include or deny. YOU CANT’T DO THAT WITH ICQ, EASILY.

The lesson is simple, don’t use the standard install.  Unfortunatly I didn’t use the custom option, as one rarely needs to, and as a result my downstairs machine had a whole slew of ICQ related BS installed, including the toolbar.

In deleting it, I figured that was enough.  WRONG!

It also changed the search option in Firefox Browser, without any prompt from firefox. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, was triggered and asked if I wanted to change not only my home page, but default search engine, which I refused.  Internet Explorer works fine, but hello Firefox.

The browser that was supposed to be the answer to the porous IE browser, that was constantly attacked, ridiculed, ALLOWED THE SEARCH DEFAULT TO BE CHANGED.  IT ALSO ALLOWED FOR THE HOMEPAGE TO BE CHANGED, AND ALLOWED FOR THE TOOLBAR TO BE INSTALLED.

HOW THE HELL IS THAT BEING A SECURE BROWSER?

I don’t often use the address bar for searches. However, I needed to the other night, and to my surprise, I started getting results from ICQ Search. Now I never changed my settings, which are set to high, and there was this obnoxious search index, not only showing me results, but listing my latest browsing search history.

Try to find a way to get rid of it, was a total and complete nightmare. Even going to Firefox was not user friendly, but eventually, after wasting several hours, I found the solution. Hopefully I have gotten rid of that ICQ option, but you know, for Open Source software, for supposedly being Secure, I am totally disgusted with Firefox.

So here is the solution, if you get stuck with the same problem, or perhaps another similar one, involving Firefox.  You need to in the address bar, type in ” about ” with a semi colon, followed by  ” config ” to bring up a whole list of options.  ( You would type it in, with the quotes of course, or spaces. )

Then you need to scroll down the list of options, to find ” Keyword ” and ” URL ” which will more than likely show you the default address for the search engine. In this case, ICQ.  

Right click to bring up a box of options, and select  ” reset ” and that is it.

Now that is simple, but you know, they make it damn hard to find. And it shouldn’t be that way. This is NOT there computer, and for them to sneak in changes, is simply wrong. It also says a lot about how these businesses operate, and lends me to not believe in their stated privacy policies.

Mar 27th by Malcontent