InstallMonetizer quietly starts editing website, privacy policy (update 3) Within Windows

In what’s clearly a response to recentcriticism (and probably a phone call from Y Combinator’s Paul Graham), InstallMonetizer made changes to its privacy policy moments ago. The change is a half-baked attempt to clear up whether information collected by its junkware installers is personally identifiable or not. Oddly, they missed the contradictory language and typos throughout and didn’t bother to up the revision number (currently sitting at v3) or notify anyone about the change. It is, after all, “your responsibility to review [the] policy periodically.”

Totally worth $500,000.

Before:

[...] We gather personally identifiable and may include information regarding your geo-location, ip address, operating system, language setting and information regarding whether recommended advertiser software has been accepted, downloaded, installed and any reason for failure installing. None of his information is personally identifiable.

After:

[...] We gather non personally identifiable aggregate data and may include information regarding your geo-location, ip address, operating system, language setting and information regarding whether recommended advertiser software has been accepted, downloaded, installed and any reason for failure installing. None of his information is personally identifiable.

Update 1 (01/17/2013 5PM PST):

More edits are in, featuring typo cleanup and the addition of an odd open-source exclusion…:

Before:

[...] You hereby warrant and undertake: a) To bundle the co-bundle only within your Installer.

After:

[...] You hereby warrant and undertake: a) To bundle the co-bundle code only within software legally owned by you. Open-source software is a community product and you may not use our co-bundles with it.

… along with new information about MAC address PII gathered by its software:

Before:

[...] THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND WHY: Cookies- When you visit our site we insert a cookie into your browser. Cookies are used to help us understand our users and our product activity. This data may include storing user preferences, website activity, usage and other information. [...] Consumers Receiving Product Recommendations- We review the consumer’s pc for existing software. This is done to provide the consumer an advertiser software which they currently do not have installed on their computer. This information is not stored in order to maintain consumer’s privacy. We gather non personally identifiable aggregate data and may include information regarding your geo-location, ip address, operating system, language setting and information regarding whether recommended advertiser software has been accepted, downloaded, installed and any reason for failure installing. None of his information is personally identifiable.

After:

[...] THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND WHY: Cookies- When you visit our site we insert a cookie into your browser. Cookies are used to help us understand our users and our product activity. This data may include storing user preferences, website activity, usage and other information. This information is never shared with third parties. [...] Consumers Receiving Product Recommendations- We review the consumer’s pc for existing software. This is done to provide the consumer an advertiser software which they currently do not have installed on their computer. This information is not stored in order to maintain consumer’s privacy. We gather non personally identifiable aggregate data and may include information regarding your geo-location, ip address, MAC address (MD5 hashed for security), operating system, language setting and information regarding whether recommended advertiser software has been accepted, downloaded, installed and any reason for failure installing. None of his information is personally identifiable. This information is never shared with third parties.

Update 2 (01/17/2013 7PM PST):

Looks like the website as a whole is starting to change. One of InstallMonetizer’s “advisors” was removed from the front page — Microsoft’s Arjun Bedit. (The data is still present in the HTML, with a display:none CSS style.) I edited the post title to reflect this.

Removed:

Update 3 (01/20/2013 3:47AM PST):

I found a few copies of InstallMonetizer bundles out on the Internet and can confirm that MAC address information is sent in the clear. So much for hashing MAC address information per the new privacy policy:

We gather non personally identifiable aggregate data and may include information regarding your geo-location, ip address, MAC address (MD5 hashed for security), operating system, language setting and information [...]

These could be older bundles but the privacy policy must reflect all versions of InstallMonetizer code out there…