I have gone back and forth on whether to block Ascentive, CyberDefender, DoubleMySpeed, FinallyFast, MyCleanPC, and MyCleanerPC among others. Up until now I thought people should check this stuff out for themselves. I have finally put many of these hosts into the main section of my hosts file. Why did I put them there? Because they really aren't malware (maliciels) so they do not belong in the risk section. It looks strange to see them mixed in with ad servers and trackers but there is no other place to put them. (update 2011-04-18: After looking at the cookies they are going back in and I also block their cookies). More than anything else this is a statement that you should have no need of these products if you regularly clean out old temporary files and optimize your disk, etcetera. If you have had more than one AV program, make sure you completely uninstall old versions and that includes removal of the unused registry entries. The products listed here can do some of that for you. Some free alternatives for the pay programs I blocked that you can consider are (given in alphabetical order):
CC Cleaner
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
Glary's Utilities
http://preview.tinyurl.com/apmuwj
Malware Bytes
http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_pro
I may add some more in the future but I would like to keep this a lean list. Some users claim these products work even better than the programs you must purchase.
I have heard that you may need a geek to help you with CC Cleaner or it will get carried away. Also, it is known to remove passwords that you keep in browsers, etcetera. If nothing else, that should prompt you to purchase a password program to encrypt and store your passwords some place safer. Shame on you for leaving your passwords out in the open anyway.
Also, even with something as simple as Java, make sure you unselect any toolbar install unless you really want that particular toolbar. I have read some place that Glary's includes the Ask Toolbar. Other people may like toolbars but I don't like them. If you are like me then you will never fast track an install. I select the inspect everything approach and make sure I don't get something I didn't want.
Now I have given you some alternatives to what I just blocked. You are of course free to disagree with me and delete the entries in the hosts file or just go back to the default hosts file and get the products that are advertised forever on TV. At one time I used to block Stop-Sign.com but I don't block it any more. If you think what Stop-Sign provides is superior to Symantec, Kaspersky or some other AV product that is your decision to make. Maybe these products I am blocking will mature and I will also not block them in the future. Eventually it all comes down to the fact that the end user needs to make all of these decisions anyway. At least now you are given a second chance to back out until you remove the block to do some research and then decide for yourself what you want to do. At least what I am pointing you towards doesn't cost very much. That is all I was attempting to do in the first place.
