Access your favourite MSE linked sites easily with this Advanced Toolbar Download

DocProc

The Advanced Toolbar is an award winning Internet Explorer toolbar that enables you to search over 100 search engines and has piles of very useful features. It has more features than the Google, Yahoo, and MSN toolbars combined. No other toolbar has as many features as the Advanced Toolbar.

The Advanced Toolbar is COMPLETELY FREE. No cost to you ever. No limitations. No personal information is required whatsoever and the Advanced Toolbar has absolutely No Adware, No Spyware, & No Malware.

This Free Download should make your life much, much easier.

Check out all the features at

http://www.advancedtoolbar.com/features.htm

This toolbar also features icons for accessing many other sites and applications

The ability to add and remove a shortcut is an excellent touch, as are the built-in file shredder, calculator, and calendar.

As you might expect, this toolbar includes a pop-up blocker, which demonstrated decent but not immaculate performance during our tests.

We also liked the assorted tools for tidying up your computer.

Even though Advanced Searchbar for Windows' utilitarian name might not make you sit up and take notice, its extensive functionality surely will.

Browntoa

you may want to read this before installing

http://www.castlecops.com/p781145-Advanced_ToolBar_riddled_with_spyware.html

impy78

Bloody spyware!!!

DocProc

Thank you for that, Browntoa. I have a paranoid hatred of Spyware and Pop-ups.

This Toolbar is truly fantastic and so I would be very greatful for lots more comments - particularly any negative ones.

I think the positive ones, namely the outstanding list of features, which the Toolbar has, speak for themselves.

Lots of things can show up as Adware/Spyware, etc. when that is actually not the case.

As an example, 'Ad-Aware' will show up that 'Spybot - Search and Destroy' is spyware, I believe, whereas that is actually not the case.

Also, certain specific spyware removal programs, because they include within their own name, the name of the trojan they are designed to remove, can irritatingly also show up as spyware, when the search scan is done .

masonic

Is this hosted at any of the well known reputable download sites? That would at least go some way to giving their claim it is not spyware some credence.

Browntoa

it's sort of "juries out" on this one, seems to be bundled with other downloads, which is sort of suspicious, but lots of sites show its ok...

Browntoa

it's sort of "juries out" on this one, seems to be bundled with other downloads, which is sort of suspicious, but lots of sites show its ok...

DocProc

Some good comments here, including green lights from PCWorld and McAfee. Check the links:-

http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showtopic=90591

DocProc

Did an Ad-Aware and also a Spybot -Search & Destroy scan: All OK.

Uninstalled Google Tool Bar. Uninstalled Yahoo Tool Bar (never ever used it really)

Installed Advanced Toolbar.

Did another Ad-Aware scan: All OK - nothing found.

And also another Spybot -Search & Destroy scan: Found 5 Red Items, thus

1. Tagasaurus: Tracking cookie

2. SurfSideKick: Tracking cookie

3. Zanox: Tracking cookie

4. MediaPlex: Tracking cookie

5. Microsoft.Windows.Security.InternetExplorer: Settings (Registry change)

Should I be worried about any of this?

masonic

DocProc wrote:

Should I be worried about any of this?

Tracking cookies are used to relay information about you from one site to another. It could be that the toolbar is profiling you, or it could be, for example, advertising sites with content on the pages you are visiting. Do the tracking cookies still come up when you visit the same sites without the toolbar installed?

DocProc

Whenever I do a scan with AdAware I get lots of tracking cookies.

Tracking cookies are quite normal cookies and generally needn't be deleted. I don't delete them because they would only reappear the next time I return to say, one of my subscription sites. This is quite normal and it is the same for us all when we subscribe to a site.

The scan above with Spybot Search & Destroy, which revealed the tracking cookies I've listed in my posting, showed them to me as 'Red' rather than 'Green'

In the 'Help' section SS & D says:-

Interpreting the results - Tutorial

At this point, you could just jump to the last point, and remove the results.

Instead we recommend that you first have a look at what all the stuff is that Spybot-S&D detected. The first thing you should know is to distinguish between the red entries, which represent spyware and similar threats, and the green entries, which are usage tracks.

For the usage tracks (I hope you have followed that link to read what they are), removal is non-critical, but depends on your personal preferences.

Ignoring the usage tracks for now, you should have a look at the red entries which represent the real threats. While you of course can trust us that we have chosen the targets using strict criteria, you can check for yourself if you click on each product and then on the grey button on the right you can read the product information in the box popping up.

Spyware and Adware - Dictionary

What is spyware? To put it simply, spyware is software that transmits personally identifiable information from your computer to some place in the internet without your explicit approval knowledge.

Spyware is typically not the product you install yourself, but small add-ons, that you may or may not disable during install. In most cases, the EULA somewhere has a few lines telling you about privacy matters, but typically most users don't read the complete EULA and never know they got spyware on their system.

A less threatening kind of malware (i.e. malicious software) is adware. Adware is similar to spyware, but does not transmit personally identifiable information, or at least the collector promises not to sell it. Instead, aggregated usage information is collected.

Adware is also often a side-effect of spyware, as both monitor you for a sole purpose – delivering you advertisement that is especially tailored to your habits.

Another kind that is detected under the spyware category are tracking cookies. Cookies are used all over the internet in useful and less useful places. Advertisement companies often set cookies whenever your browser loads a banner from them. In that case and if that cookie contains a GUID, the company gets notice about every site you visit that contains their ads.

Decision on exceptions - Tutorial

All problems displayed in red are regarded as real threats and should be dealt with. But while you read the product description (you can find it by selecting an item in the list and then clicking on the grey button on the right side), you may still decide to keep a threat, or just a usage track. Maybe you don't want your list of most recently used Word documents removed? At this point you have three options.

You could decide on ignoring all usage tracks. In that case you could open the File sets page on the Settings section of the program, and disable the Usage tracks entries.

Or if you want to just keep all tracks from a specific product, just right-click a product in the results list.

Finally, if you want to keep just one file, that is possible the same way.

Usage tracks - Dictionary

Usage tracks are your fingerprints in your system. Whenever you visit a page with your browser, or just open any file, that information is stored deep inside Windows. In most cases that is very useful – if you want to open that file again, you can select it from a list instead of typing the whole filename or browsing the whole directory structure again.

But in some cases you may want to hide your activity, because spyware and internet attackers may use that information. Spybot - Search & Destroy can remove some of the most important and common tracks on your system