And in the blue corner, Symantec

Just got this over email:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23801

Symantec wants a court to allow its software to identify some programs made by Hotbar as adware.

Hotbar, which is made by a Microsoft partner, Hotbar.com, is a kids add-on that personalises email and browsers. It gives a range of smiley faces for users to play with and gives access to search, skins and yellow pages.

However, HotBar also tracks web site visits and also has an autoupdate feature. Some users find it tricky to remove.

That just brightens up my day. All those spyware companies sueing people willy-nilly screaming 'we're not spyware! our software shows 26 popups a minute and tracks pretty much everything from your surfing habits to your email to your dog, but it's not personally identifiable!!!1' were really starting to piss me off, because you just know they're full of it. They just update their crap to not report your email address back to their servers (which ofcourse, it did in the first place, along with a hundred other pieces of info you don't want to see out on the 'net) and then claim it's not spyware since the info is 'not personally identifiable'. I even got a few emails myself like that, even though my software doesn't even target specific malware (nobody reads help texts anymore today). Seeing an antivirus company hit a spyware company with a lawsuit for the right of calling it 'spyware' just has me going 'YEAH! PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE IN YOUR FACE!'. Symantec isn't exactly the coolest company to me, but this sure boosted their rankings in the awesome-o-meter.