{"id":14357,"date":"2014-11-03T01:00:44","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=14357"},"modified":"2014-11-03T16:37:32","modified_gmt":"2014-11-04T02:37:32","slug":"disabling-the-ask-toolbar-with-java-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=14357","title":{"rendered":"Disabling the Ask Toolbar with Java Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why does <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Oracle_Corporation\" target=\"_blank\">Oracle<\/a> insist on bundling the Ask toolbar with Java updates?  I can understand making a little money to offset the costs of a freely distributed product.  But is the money worth the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/a-close-look-at-how-oracle-installs-deceptive-software-with-java-updates-7000010038\/\" target=\"_blank\">ire of every internet user<\/a> in the marketplace?  Just type &#8220;Ask toolbar&#8221; into Google and you see hundreds of articles about user frustration and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/article2\/0,2817,2421591,00.asp\" target=\"_blank\">instructions for removing<\/a> the useless thing.  It truly belongs in the category of malware.<\/p>\n<p>Ask is not even a decent search engine.  OK, it works fine if you are looking for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Justin_Bieber\" target=\"_blank\">Justin Bieber<\/a> news, but it sucks at technical and scholarly searches.  On the other hand, the money paid to Oracle and other software vendors is probably the only thing keeping <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ask.com\" target=\"_blank\">Ask corporation<\/a> alive.  A truly despicable business model with no redeeming traits.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, there is a checkbox to opt-out of the toolbar.  Yes, I have missed this checkbox during one of the many routine updates of Java that occur each month.  Then I have to go through the chore of removing the junk from my browsers.<\/p>\n<p>There is a way to avoid the Java installation trap on Windows OS at least, something that deserves to be <a href=\"http:\/\/superuser.com\/questions\/549028\/how-can-i-prevent-ask-com-toolbar-from-being-installed-every-time-java-is-update\" target=\"_blank\">passed around<\/a>.  It does require a registry change, but that is not that difficult.  Just create a textfile with the extension .reg, this is a registry modifiction script.  Cut and paste the snippet of code below into this text file, save and double click to execute&#8230;  Done.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><code>Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00<\/p>\n<p>[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\JavaSoft]<br \/>\n\"SPONSORS\"=\"DISABLE\"<\/p>\n<p>[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Wow6432Node\\JavaSoft]<br \/>\n\"SPONSORS\"=\"DISABLE\"<\/code><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Unfortunatly this only works for Java, keep an eye out for other sneaky install options from Ask.  At least Java is the only one I usually encounter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why does Oracle insist on bundling the Ask toolbar with Java updates? I can understand making a little money to offset the costs of a freely distributed product. But is the money worth the ire of every internet user in the marketplace? Just type &#8220;Ask toolbar&#8221; into Google and you see hundreds of articles about &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=14357\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Disabling the Ask Toolbar with Java Update&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[1908,1910,1909],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14357"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14357"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14364,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14357\/revisions\/14364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}