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It would not be Paint.NET itself - lots of Windows freeware apps are approached by advertising companies. The advertising company pays the freeware company a lo

by RyanZAG 11y ago

It would not be Paint.NET itself - lots of Windows freeware apps are approached by advertising companies. The advertising company pays the freeware company a lot of money to add a checkbox during install. It's this kind of checkbox that the author is talking about. They probably gave Paint.NET (and Java, winzip, winrar, etc etc) a ton of money to put that there.

tracker1 11y ago
Paint.net has ads on their pages, right next to the download page... Their own download link is non-obvious, and the advertisers create full-size ads with a big green button saying "download" ... what the user gets isn't the installer from paint.net proper. I think the fact that the paint.net guys are resorting to allowing ad networks on their main page instead of an inline donate option (like ubuntu) is pretty bad. Another example, as recently as 3 months ago a search on google for "chrome" would result in a few ads that were for malware like this. The ones that are in the actual installers upset me a lot... more so in open-source, and one of the reasons people are starting to avoid source-forge like the plague.
- pests 11y ago
  I thought SF rescinded their new policies? Regardless, I still won't be using them unless I must. I guess this might be one benefit of the Windows Store, as long as that hasn't been taken over. I haven't checked it in awhile nor know their guidelines.
  - fapjacks 11y ago
    They're trying to sell SF right now (and slashdot), so who knows what's going to happen next.
    - tracker1 11y ago
      I don't know if either have the funding, but Github or Atlassian would be better stewards of sourceforge, at least in terms of migrating the whole thing into the fold of Github or Bitbucket. As it stands, I get a little sad when I see a project still on or using SF.
pests 11y ago
Okay, thank you. I must have skimmed the intro the first time. Still he only mentions once that he works at the advertising agency and not Paint.NET, in his second sentence. I was thoroughly confused about what type of company Paint.NET had become.
thaumasiotes 11y ago
Based on the text of the article: > Over time, those notification and opt-in screens were “optimized” away as much as possible. They already “agreed” to our 23 page EULA when they were trying to install Paint.NET but accidentally clicked the wrong download button anyway, right? I'd say that what he's talking about is those sites that offer software for download, and the download button is displayed under an advertisement which also shows an image of a download button. If you click on the ad (showing an image of a download button), you get the malware, instead of the Paint.NET installer that you were trying to download.
zyx321 11y ago
There's also a lot of sites that package adware without the developer's consent. See for example the semi-recent Sourceforge controversy: SF approached devs asking if they'd be interested in using their new download manager that would automatically install third-party 'offers' (unless the user declined the EULA the first 2 times and accepted on the third try). The GIMP team not only declined, but abandoned SF altogether - so now SF's version of GIMP includes adware, and the devs don't see a single dime from it.

by RyanZAG 11y ago

tracker1 11y ago

Paint.net has ads on their pages, right next to the download page... Their own download link is non-obvious, and the advertisers create full-size ads with a big green button saying "download" ... what the user gets isn't the installer from paint.net proper. I think the fact that the paint.net guys are resorting to allowing ad networks on their main page instead of an inline donate option (like ubuntu) is pretty bad. Another example, as recently as 3 months ago a search on google for "chrome" would result in a few ads that were for malware like this. The ones that are in the actual installers upset me a lot... more so in open-source, and one of the reasons people are starting to avoid source-forge like the plague.

pests 11y ago
I thought SF rescinded their new policies? Regardless, I still won't be using them unless I must. I guess this might be one benefit of the Windows Store, as long as that hasn't been taken over. I haven't checked it in awhile nor know their guidelines.
- fapjacks 11y ago
  They're trying to sell SF right now (and slashdot), so who knows what's going to happen next.
  - tracker1 11y ago
    I don't know if either have the funding, but Github or Atlassian would be better stewards of sourceforge, at least in terms of migrating the whole thing into the fold of Github or Bitbucket. As it stands, I get a little sad when I see a project still on or using SF.

pests 11y ago

Okay, thank you. I must have skimmed the intro the first time. Still he only mentions once that he works at the advertising agency and not Paint.NET, in his second sentence. I was thoroughly confused about what type of company Paint.NET had become.

thaumasiotes 11y ago

Based on the text of the article: > Over time, those notification and opt-in screens were “optimized” away as much as possible. They already “agreed” to our 23 page EULA when they were trying to install Paint.NET but accidentally clicked the wrong download button anyway, right? I'd say that what he's talking about is those sites that offer software for download, and the download button is displayed under an advertisement which also shows an image of a download button. If you click on the ad (showing an image of a download button), you get the malware, instead of the Paint.NET installer that you were trying to download.

zyx321 11y ago

There's also a lot of sites that package adware without the developer's consent. See for example the semi-recent Sourceforge controversy: SF approached devs asking if they'd be interested in using their new download manager that would automatically install third-party 'offers' (unless the user declined the EULA the first 2 times and accepted on the third try). The GIMP team not only declined, but abandoned SF altogether - so now SF's version of GIMP includes adware, and the devs don't see a single dime from it.