Alexa Toolbar

[jampers]

Hi
Does anyone know a web ranking site. It's identical to amazon.com except for web sites and not books cds etc.
Ta Jampers

[Lex]

Perhaps you're thinking of Alexa.com?

[jampers]

Thanks Lex, it is Alexa.
It also has a toolbar which has spyware in it
Jampers

[Webmaster T]

Alexa and the Alexa toolbar (possibly the first toolbar of this kind) have been around long before spyware! I think you are mistaking it's tracking of your online activity as something nefarious when AFAIK it's not.

[jampers]

Hi
Thanks for your reply. I don't know a lot about these things. I ran an adaware scan and a load of Alexa came up in it.

[seobook]

Alexa and the Alexa toolbar (possibly the first toolbar of this kind) have been around long before spyware! I think you are mistaking it's tracking of your online activity as something nefarious when AFAIK it's not.

I think many people have complained that it was hard to uninstall their toolbar and that is where the spyware label came from...

[Dodger]

I think many people have complained that it was hard to uninstall their toolbar and that is where the spyware label came from...

Yep, I had a hell of a time getting it off of my system. They do have an uninstaller at Alexa that I used to finally get it off, but it is not a well advertised link (heck, I forgot how I stumbled onto it to tell you the truth).

The toolbar does a lot of information gathering. It is listed in the AdAware and S&D lists as spyware. There are actually two programs that are running with the toolbar ... the other escapes me right now (something like Aurelate???).

One thing I did notice about the toolbar that prompted me to finally remove it was when I had the toolbar disabled....I still noticed server calls going back to Alexa in my Status bar. Now, I don't know how anyone else feels about that...but I did not like seeing the toolbar sending data when I had expressly turned it off. Maybe something in their Privacy Policy mentions that it will still do this and it is normal operation, but that does not cut it in my book.

[Webmaster T]

Hi
I ran an adaware scan and a load of Alexa came up in it.Yes, I use spybot and a number of reputable sites get the same treatment. When I looked into it it turns out that that spybot has deemed some privacy policies don't meet their criteria/standards. I'd be careful about assuming all programs found from a scan by these programs are spyware but I would look at their privacy policy if I were using the sites often.

[5starAffiliatePrograms]

Alexa does record info but it's not bad. The way these spyware programs compete is by trying to show you the biggest list of stuff it can find.

Many of them target affiliate cookies and all types of things that are not truly spyware. That way users think "wow this software found a ton of bad stuff on my computer and therefore it must be more thorought han the others"

[Dodger]

Alexa does record info but it's not bad. The way these spyware programs compete is by trying to show you the biggest list of stuff it can find.

I used Alexa for a long time and thought the same thing. I knew what the policies were, and I ignored the AdAware and other alerts -- opted for ignore.

But when I disabled the toolbar one day and saw that it was clearly transmitting data (visible in my status bar) ... that is where I drew the line.

[andrewgoodman]

Agreed here. I uninstalled the Alexa Toolbar but later found it to be very much present when I used Ad-Aware to eliminate spyware from my registry. Too bad because I think Alexa has done some good things.