Furl

I saw an ad for LookSmart’s FURL - Your personal web file. It sounded great! Kept a copy of web pages on file for ‘instant access’. Better than bookmarks. OK. In retrospect, maybe it does sound too good to be true, but I’m not tremendously web savvy, so there always could be a better mousetrap out there! So I sign up. It’s free. OK. Lots of pop-up ads - I got something that takes care of that - and I could deal with some of it anyway if I had ‘instant access’ to webpages I wanted to ‘save’ and have ‘instant access’ to. Now, the problem. Avast (the free home edition - blessing really) called it adware, stopped the download and my only option was to abort. So I did. And I came here to find out if anybody else knew anything about FURL - like should I turn off Avast temporarily to get the thing downloaded then turn it back on… OR is FURL just really bad news??? Anybody help?

thanks Denise


Welcome to the forums, Denise! :slight_smile:

Before today, I had never heard of FURL. But then, I never use LookSmart neither. After reading over several pages of this Google search …

http://www.google.com/search?q=FURL&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1

… I did not find much bad said about FURL or else I missed it somehow. A couple of blog entries state how someone likes another program better and such.

With anything offered for free, there is a “catch” somewhere. In the case of such “free” web services, there will always be ads in order to support the “free” service. Could you give us the complete text of the Avast message?

Even better, it would be very helpful if you could post a screen shot of the message Avast gives you when you try to download this. Information on posting a screen shot can be found at this link …

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=8982.0

Perhaps someone else on here has heard of FURL and/or uses it. Hopefully, someone else will post about this also.


http://www.furl.net/faq.jsp#spyware

  1. Is Furl spyware? Are you tracking me and alerting advertisers?
Furl is not spyware and is in no way associated with any spyware vendors. We have had reports of spyware warnings from Pest Patrol and SpyBot and are actively working to resolve those issues. It is true that the items you Furl will be stored on our servers, but that is your personal data. We are just here to help you save and access it. We are not tracking your behavior. We are not notifying advertisers, and in fact you don't even need to install any software on your machine to use Furl, if you prefer not to. Instead of the IE toolbar, you can just use a "button link" which is simply a bookmark in your browser.

We do display ads based on the topic of the page you are looking at, but that is no more spyware than ads on search engines or on any newspaper site. We’ll say it one more time: Furl is not spyware

I wouldnt worry about it if i were you.
Aslong as you dont mind having ads associated with the program.

:slight_smile: Hi Denise :

 Promotions for crapware, such as FURL always looks good;
 they do NOT expect you to READ the EULA ( End User 
 License Agreement ); perhaps for future "protection", you 
 should use "EULAlyzer" available at :
 www.javacoolsoftware.com . Info on this program :
 "EULAlyzer™ 1.1 

Analyze license agreements for interesting words and phrases.

License agreements - a pain?

End user license agreements (EULAs) are the bane of most computer users.
No one wants to read through pages and pages of boring text before installing a program. And many programs put their license agreements in small windows that require lots of scrolling. So many people either skim them or skip reading them altogether.

But it can be dangerous not to read license agreements.
License agreements can provide information about the intentions of software, and other bundled components. Have you ever installed a program, only to have your desktop taken over by advertising? It may have been noted in the license agreement that you simply clicked past. If you aren’t reading the license agreements, you have no idea what you could be agreeing to.

You should always read license agreements before agreeing to them.
But now there’s a way of making that much easier.

EULAlyzer - Making it all easy

EULAlyzer can analyze license agreements in seconds, and provide a detailed listing of potentially interesting words and phrases. Discover if the software you’re about to install displays pop-up ads, transmits personally identifiable information, uses unique identifiers to track you, or much much more.

The Benefits

Discover potentially hidden behavior about the software you’re going to install
Pick up on things you missed when reading license agreements
Keep a saved database of the license agreements you view
Instant results - super-fast analysis in just a second
And with additional features like the EULA Research Center, which optionally allows users to anonymously submit license agreements they scan to help us to further improve the program, everyone can be a part of the effort to make something that used to be so tedious, so easy.

When installing software, never just click past the license agreement. Pop it into EULAlyzer, and EULAlyze it!

*Note: This program does not provide legal advice. It can only highlight information that you may want to consider before making your own decision whether to agree to a license agreement or not. You should always consult a lawyer (or other authorized individual) for advice on legal issues. "

Well, yeah, I still think it sounds great:) Learned about Furl from Will Richardson’s (http://www.weblogg-ed.com/) book about web tools in education and I don’t think he would recommend anything connected to adware or spyware. I also mailed furl.net and got a prompt reply where they swear themselves free.

Anyway, I think Furl is a great research tool and I take my chances. Will run Adaware (scanner) after a while, though!

/Niilo