Smilebox Smilebox.com - Badware/Malware

[mangg]

Hello Every1,

I am seeing this annoyance of an "application" called Smilebox installed on several client applications. It doesn't require admin to install it seems, does some self repair and it has no-uninstall available. Has anyone else seen this annoyance? Of course it has no support details on how to uninstall it and or remove it. I have contacted their "support" team repeatedly and have not received a response.

Anyone else see this one?

Any ideas on how to proceed?

[tashi]

Hello mangg

See the comments at PolyGeek: http://polygeek.com/394_flex_out-of-...x-into-another

Best regards.

[smilebox]

Hi, I work for Smilebox and would like to provide a little more technical info relevant to this thread:

Smilebox is software for making slideshows, scrapbooks, invitations, and other kinds of multimedia creations. There are both Windows and Mac versions available.

On Windows, it is installed in the user's Application Data folder; this is why it's possible for a user to install Smilebox without having Administrator privileges.

Smilebox can be uninstalled from the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel. Look for "Smilebox" (or "Hallmark Smilebox" if it was installed from Hallmark.com).

(Smilebox support can be contacted at http://support.smilebox.com or email support [at] smilebox.com)

[scott selby]

I was able to Uninstall SmileBox from my computer without a problem. While the program seemed to function on my Windows 7 platform without a hitch, I uninstalled it because I didn't like that it had reset my browser default to open to their website rather than my current default. I really dislike when programs do that without asking you first if it is OK to do so. It made me then wonder what else it had changed on my computer without my permission.
SS

[BennoTron]

Hi, I work for Smilebox and would like to provide a little more technical info relevant to this thread:

Smilebox is software for making slideshows, scrapbooks, invitations, and other kinds of multimedia creations. There are both Windows and Mac versions available.

On Windows, it is installed in the user's Application Data folder; this is why it's possible for a user to install Smilebox without having Administrator privileges.

Smilebox can be uninstalled from the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel. Look for "Smilebox" (or "Hallmark Smilebox" if it was installed from Hallmark.com).

(Smilebox support can be contacted at http://support.smilebox.com or email support [at] smilebox.com)

So, as a representative from Smilebox, can you confirm or deny that installing Smilebox on a PC (or Mac, but I'm working on PCs) allows other programs to be installed without user acknowledgement or action, such as shopathome toolbar, trovi search, coupon downloader, better search, other "search helpers" or toolbars, or other known malware, trojans or browser hijackers? I take a lot of viruses off of a lot of computers, and much of the time, if I don't remove Smilebox, the infections are back within 24 hours. Also, if I go to the programs and features dialog and sort by install date, all of the malware programs on a pc tend to closely follow the installation of Smilebox. I want to advise the PC owner what actions contributed to the issues on their machine to prevent further infections, and up until now, I haven't specifically called out Smilebox as a "definitely bad" program, but I'd like to hear what someone associated with Smilebox has to say.

BennoTron