I was recommended to try TuneUp to fix some of the issues that I’ve been having with my Windows iTunes installation (My Three Issues with iTunes) so today I downloaded it and installed it. Read on to find out why I have yet to have time to use it.
Guess what – without my permission it loaded ‘Yahoo Community Smart Bar’ into all my browsers and enabled this plug-in. When installing the software I was offered the opportunity to not install the Amazon Browser Bar and DealPly. These were opt-outs not an opt-ins, which is not very user friendly but at least I was offered the opportunity to avoid them..
After clicking on “Install” which is the option presented on the DealPly page TuneUp was installed along with the ‘Yahoo Community Smart Bar’ – strange I was offered no option offered to miss this out of the install.
Curious, I went back and did some experiments and took this screen shot of a section of the terms and conditions. It would have been a nice touch to have a hotlink so terms and conditions could be read as a document rather than a scrolling window . . .
Anyway, back to the world of installing software. There is an option ‘Skip All’ on the first page where all the attention is with Amazon’s bars. Look carefully in the first image above in the bottom left corner.
I spend a lot of time using my browsers for my work and am particular about the way I use them and which search engines I use. The plug-in was spread across Chrome, Firefox and the 32 and 64 bit installations of Internet Explorer – none were untouched.
By the way, I never did try TuneUp on my iTunes installation as all my efforts went into uninstalling the ’hidden downloads’ that had been installed with its installation.
Since I first wrote this post the developers behind TuneUp for iTunes have closed for business reported in this post “A once-great app for iTunes bites the dust”