MWSoemon.exe Description : |
MyWebSearch email plug-in for Outlook Express and Internet Explorer which enables the user to search the web from within Internet Explorer or Outlook Express without first homing onto a search engine's homepage. MyWebSearch typically gets installed when the user downloads and installs freebies from the Fun Web Products series of websites (from Focus Interactive Inc), such as www.smileycentral.com, www.popularscreensavers.com, www.cursormania.com, www.mymailsignature.com, and many more. Once installed, MyWebSearch, which shows up as an Internet Explorer Search Toolbar, gathers information about your web browsing habits so that it can display targeted advertising when you are browsing the web. This is what we call adware. You can read Focus Interactive's full Privacy Policy here at http://www.mywebsearch.com/jsp/gb/eula.jsp#privacy. At the time of writing, 12-Dec-2004, one of the most relevant extracts from this Privacy Policy is as follows : "Information gathered online can generally be categorised as either anonymous or personally identifiable. Anonymous information is information that cannot be traced back to a specific individual. For example, we know how many search queries are submitted each day at each of our Web Sites but we generally do not know the names, e-mail addresses or gender of the people asking the questions. Personally identifiable information is information from which you or another individual can be identified. This information can include your name, e-mail, address, postcode, age, etc. Gathering and Use of Anonymous Information. Each time a visitor comes to the Results Site, we collect some information to improve the overall quality of the online experience, including product monitoring, product improvement, and targeted advertising. At the Results Site, we collect the visitor's domain name (e.g. whether the user is logged on from compaq.com or whitehouse.gov), referral data (e.g., we record the address of the last URL a user visited prior to clicking through to the Results Site), and browser and platform type (e.g., whether the visitor is using the My Web Search Browser, a Netscape browser on a Macintosh platform). In addition to collecting these types of information, we collect aggregate queries for internal reporting and targeted advertising. We also count, track, and aggregate the visitor's activity into our analysis of general traffic flows at the Results Site (e.g. tracking where traffic comes from, how traffic responds to different designs of the Results Site, etc.). To these ends, we may merge anonymized information about you into group data, which may then be shared on an aggregated basis with our advertisers. When we present this information to outside companies, such as advertisers and research firms, personally identifiable information is not included in such information.". |
