FALSE POSITIVE: ShopAtHome.com FREE Shopping Toolbar

To Whom it May Concern,

I'm writing to request your assistance in dealing with a false positive detection with the ShopAtHome.com FREE Shopping Toolbar. We are seeing two spyware detections on Windows 7 for the following registry keys using Spybot v1.6.2.46 with latest detection update on 11/3/2010.

(SBI $1D7E9447) Browser Helper Object
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Browser Helper Objects\{E8DAAA30-6CAA-4b58-9603-8E54238219E2}

(SBI $1D7E9447) Class ID
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{E8DAAA30-6CAA-4b58-9603-8E54238219E2}

We have previously contacted your support department about the false positive and were told that the prior behavior of our toolbar was the reason why we were being blocked and that we needed to change our CLSID to be reconsidered. At the time the detection read, "Privacy violation. Tries to connect without user consent. Unrequested download of files. Each visit to a affiliated merchant site is tracked in a log file. Also known as SAHBundle."

Our response was that this version of the toolbar has never exhibited the behavior described by Spybot and that perhaps a mistake was made in the initial analysis. If the program is viewed independent of the privacy checks and opt-ins we have built into our website it does appear to connect without user consent so this mistake is understandable.

You can observe the privacy checks and opt ins we have implemented by doing the following.
1.) Go to our site, www.ShopAtHome.com
2.) Create a user account at www.ShopAtHome.com/Join.aspx,
3.) Download the toolbar at www.ShopAtHome.com/FreeToolbarDownload.aspx

We have always limited toolbar downloads for this version to our site in order to prevent software fraud, if you did obtain a v5.1 toolbar outside of our site you should consider it to be fraudulent.

We are about to release version 5.2 of the toolbar which is available for analysis at www.ShopAtHome.com/shopathometoolbarpreview.aspx. The new version will have the same opt-ins as the previous version. Unfortunately, we are not able to change our CLSID for this release because it would negatively impact our standing with other AV companies.

Please consider taking another look at our software as it seems unfair to require us to change our CLSID based upon a detection that was never accurate for the current version of the toolbar.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Cheers!

Brian Rose
http://forums.spybot.info/misc.php?d...dyb3VwLmNvbQ==
303-843-0302ex136
www.ShopAtHome.com

Please contact our review team reviews@spybot.info again. Usually reviews will not be managed in our forum. Thanks

Thank you for the tip Buster!

I went ahead and submitted to the email address you indicated.

Hello,

I haven't received any response from the email address I was referred to, is there another address I should try as well or could somebody from Spybot please contact me about this detection at http://forums.spybot.info/misc.php?d...dyb3VwLmNvbQ==? Any information regarding the nature of this detection would be very much appreciated. We would be more than happy to work with Spybot to resolve any questions or concerns as we have done for all other AV companies that have had false positive detections with our software in the past.

Thanks,

Brian Rose
Technical Operations Associate
http://forums.spybot.info/misc.php?d...dyb3VwLmNvbQ==
www.ShopAtHome.com

This matter has been resolved, many thanks to the Spybot team for their assistance! :thanks: