Earlier this month, AOL officially announced it was planning to offer some of it's services for free. Now The New York Times is reporting that a leading software watchdog group is warning users away from AOL's free client software.
A report by the group StopBadWare.org found that the software displayed characteristics consistent with badware. The term describes a variety of downloadable applications that try to install extra components on a computer without clearly informing users of what they are or what they will do.
The StopBadware organization was founded in part to assist consumers in spotting shady software. The group is jointly run by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and the Oxford Internet Institute of Oxford University.
After receiving tips and complaints about the AOL software from users at its Web site, StopBadWare decided to test it. While they found nothing malicious in the AOL installation, John G. Palfrey Jr., executive director of the Berkman Center, said that software did not have to be malicious to violate consumer trust.
"We currently recommend that users do not install the version of AOL software that we tested," the StopBadware.org Web site read yesterday, "unless the user is comfortable with the level of risk we identify or until the application is updated consistent with the recommendations in this report."
For more information, check out StopBadWare's open inquiry on AOL 9.0.
