So much for trust

Roaming around the net I came accross the WeatherBug, small software that shows what the current weather is in your location. And then I remembered WTVJ offered the same thing with their own brand.

I looked at some screenshots of the software before downloading it and it looked familiar, so I googled it and it turns out that not only does WeatherBug show you weather, it also spys on your web activites and collects data just like spyware

Then i remembered a couple of years ago I installed it and found my PC full of spyware, so bad I had to reboot twice just to make sure it was clean.

The weatherbug comes packaged, at least that’s my understanding I didn’t actually bother to infect my PC to test, with Gator. The now notorious spyware known to track your online activites and serve ads directly or by placing it’s own ads on a competing website.

And just to make sure you don’t fiddle with the program, WeatherBug loads when you start Windows, and you can’t disable it from doing that. As some probably know, loading at start-up insures that the Gator program or any other spyware that was attached during the install of WeatherBug would also load in the background.

So I’m curious, what is a station priding itself on being a so called leader doing, dispersing software that by design is made to spy on you? That is unless there’s a special spyware-free version NBC6 uses. And if there isn’t, than that’s pretty low of them.

Symantec Security Responce – Adware.Weatherbug definitions and summary