WARNING: JUNK AHEAD

Jane Hoskyn puts the boot into tech villains, jargon-spouting companies and software stuffed with junk

Junk offender: Imgburn

Download mirror sites like Tucows and Softpedia have a history of bundling junk in their installers, so we generally advise that you download programs directly from developers’ websites instead. But then programs like Imgburn come along and turn that advice on its head.

Imgburn is a good tool for saving data to CD and DVD, which keeps your files away from ransomware hackers. Our favourite, Disc Archiver (see Best Free Software, page 18), is safe and junk-free, but the same can’t be said for the likes of Burnaware Free (Named & Shamed, Issue 497) and Imgburn.

Mirror, mirror

The Imgburn website offers an unlucky seven download links, including six that take you to download mirror sites. It feels like playing PUP roulette. I clicked Imgburn’s own link, which should be the safest choice.

After a standard licence agreement, the installer hit me with pre-ticked boxes for the Chromium browser and a Chrome extension called Search Manager. Sounds innocuous? Let’s ask the internet. “Remove Search Manager extension from Google Chrome,” offers security site Malwarefixes ( www.snipca.com/24523), explaining that Search Manager seizes control of your browser’s home page, new tab page, search engine and toolbars, and inserts itself into Windows startup.

I unticked both boxes and Imgburn obeyed my request. That doesn’t make it OK. The junk is designed to look like an important stage of installation (see screenshot), so many users would fall for it then find their browser hijacked.

Out of interest, I retraced my steps and tried the other download links, installing then uninstalling (and restarting my PC) in turn. Softpedia asked for a donation, but didn’t bundle any junk. Nor did Majorgeeks, Digital Digest, Techspot or even the dodgy-sounding ‘Free-codecs. com’. The installer from Betanews was blocked by Avast, so I have no idea what treasures lurked within.

The moral of this story is that you should never assume an installer is safe.

Islamic State is losing territory in the middle east, but still operates widely online Theresa May has called for a more concerted international effort to fight online terrorism Anti-jihadist ads are being aimed at people who have shown terrorist sympathies