Digsby: Warning
Someone recommended the program Digsby to me today. I watched the video on their site. It seems to be a multi-service IM client with Twitter, Facebook, email, and other social network services built in. A lot of stuff in the video actually turned me off, like “what if you could update your status on all your networks at once?” Well, I hate that idea. I always hated going to someone’s facebook page and seeing that it was just all their tweets, or vice versa. Besides, having just quit facbook, the only social network I use is twitter and I like TweetDeck for that.
But what the hell, it’s a free download, so if it was a decent IM client, I would be happy and ignore the rest. So I download and start the install process. Here’s what you get first:
In addition to installing itself, it wants to install a browser plugin that is going to give them money every time you buy something from certain merchants. Um… wtf? No thanks. Uncheck that and move on, cautiously at this point.
Next up we get this screen.
I admit, I actually fell for this one. I didn’t read carefully. Didn’t see an opt-out checkbox like on the other screen, clicked the “Accept” button, thinking it was a “Next” button. Moving on innocently, we get to this point:
OK, this is getting frigging ridiculous. They want to change my home page to “Google Powered Digsby” as well as my default search engine. Bug off! Worse even, is they want to use my CPU for grid computing. I didn’t even check what the hell they’d be computing on it, I just did a quick triple opt out and continued on, a bit pissed off at this point.
Then this window pops up.
No, I don’t want a damn Digsby account. I just want to see what the program does. I close that and get to the main interface, and see this:
Apparently, I HAVE to have a Digsby account to use the software at all. Well screw that. Just wasted 10 minutes of life. I close that, intending to uninstall the damn thing, but decide to check my email first. Whoa! There’s a giant “Welcome to Xobni” panel in my Outlook. Baffled, I uninstalled both Xobni and Digsby, and then walked through the Digsby install process again to see how I got duped into Xobni. That’s where I got the screenshots.
In the past, I’ve made critical remarks about software I’ve installed, only to have the developer contact me personally and say something like, “sorry you didn’t like it.” In a few cases, I felt bad – maybe I had been a bit overcritical, off the cuff puts downs, etc. But in this case, I’d say that Digsby leaves the impression of severe sleaze, bordering on malware. By my count, it tried to install 3 other pieces of software and make two browser configuration changes, all opt out. Two different UIs, for opt out, which caught me off-guard and tricked me into installing something I didn’t want. My fail, but that was their intention. So I have no problem slamming this piece of… software.
You have been warned.