Is quantserve adware?

Viruses and worms
1

Hi malware fighters,

I found a tracking cookie to-day, but NoScript blocked quantserve to access this with my Mozilla Firefox 3Beta5. Is Quantserve considered to be adware? Read here: http://ca.com/us/securityadvisor/pest/pest.aspx?id=453107261

polonus

2

I have doubts about the harm/potential of a so called tracking cookie.

The problem is who decides what is a tracking cookie, what are the parameters that would make a cookie a tracking cookie.

Tracking Cookie: Any cookie that is shared among two or more web pages for the purpose of tracking a user's surfing history.
This is plainly overkill as there are many sites with third party cookies on then that aren't used for tracking purposed. From your link the threat/privacy risk is very low so.

A little more investigating like visiting quantserve.com (which redirects to quantcast.com and would show:

Introducing Quantcast Internet Ratings

Quantcast is the only open internet ratings service. We provide advertisers with audience profiles for millions of websites and services. We invite publishers to participate and demonstrate the unique value of their audiences. The service is free to everyone

Many of the anti-spyware mark tracking cookies as serious and that is absolute c**p they are of limited harm and no real security issue more a privacy issue if even that.