Which client are you running RIGHT NOW?

[Heidi M.]

Morgwen,

Fair enough- I am in the industry and I have intimate knowledge about what 90% of the "spyware" apps REALLY do.

Gator has in the past been the worst offender- but they don't send any info you dont give them, know what i mean? (they don't send your CC info over the net, they store it locally)

after Gator got away from grabbing ppl's email addresses, everyone's cleaned up their act. I challenge you to show me one
"buggy" mainstream spyware app that is taking down ppl's OSes today. By that I mean the WhenU SaveNows, the Gator/GAINs, the eZula TopTexts, New.net, etc...

Anyways, I may not be one to agree with spyware, but I'm willing to actually objectively look at what it does, why it does it, and what affect that has on me. And as for the why, it's usually to display contextual advertising, not steal your personal info (face it Morg. who the hell wants your personal info??)

[halofan_sd]

Kath,

Well I'd prefer not to say what part I play, but I've been close to "spyware" pretty much since day one.

I find that there's a lot of negative hype, a lot of misinformation, a lot of "black helicopter" theories. I'm all for adware companies to fully disclose, blah blah, and not abuse their positions.

I think at this stage most companies are pretty decent about things- you might view things differently.

The debate just reminds me of the eCommerce one- people are largerly afraid to give their credit card information online to a secure site, but are perfectly willing for a waiter at any restaurant or a gas jockey to walk away with it for 10 minutes... just the usual mistrust of the Internet.

On a deeper level- a mistrust of the corporate world in general... university kids who've never gone out and attempted to earn a living yet...

I imagine LimeWire, BearShare, (esp. KaZaA's) cost to operate is huge.. but no one cares- they want freebies.

[Romona J]

I don't know why its missing but I'm running Phex!

[4263]

It's missing because vBulletin only lets me put 10 poll options in.

Looks like Gnucleus is rather popular... I've had trouble with its bandwidth usage, though...

[Chris80]

My list is much longer... I try to test them all!

Morgwen

[Than]

Gnucleus of course

[EMbILY]

none