Nonsense or something more?
It's probably that most computer users have come across an End User Licence Agreement (EULA) at some stage. It's also probable that most of those people just blindly clicked on `I agree', in order to dive into their new software as quickly as possible.
Many people see the EULA as a useless bunch of legalese that isn't ever likely to be of any real relevance to them and, for the most part, this is highly likely to be a reasonable assumption. However, sometimes you're likely to miss a gem of a paragraph in plain English. For example, this is an extract for the notorious GATOR eWallet:
"In exchange for offering you free software products, we collect anonymous usage information from your computer that we and our partners may use to select and display pop-up and other kinds of ads to you and to perform and publish research about how people use the Internet."
In other words: we are expressly telling you that our product is spyware and adware and if you're not going to bother to read the licence, that's your own fault.
In an effort to ascertain whether *anybody* reads EULAs, PC Pitstop included the following clause in one of its EULAs (email address obfuscation is mine):
"A special consideration which may include financial compensation will be awarded to a limited number of authorize licensee to read the section of the license agreement and contact PC Pitstop at consideration /at/ pcpitstop /dot/ com."
Translation: If you read this far and send us an email, we'll give you money.
After four months and 3,000 downloads, only one person contacted them for his reward. He received a cheque for US$1,000. Maybe it's worth reading the agreements after all.
Another major offender, under the guise of a distant relative of the Microsoft Office Paperclip is Bozai Buddy. Same idea, except a cute, purple gorilla sits on your desktop and convinces you to visit websites.
At best, this type of software is a variation of social engineering. At worst it's spyware.
Spyware is far more serious than it sounds. Apart from gathering data on you as an individual - which a lot of people don't care about until they get spam as a result - it can also slow down your machine due to background processes, website redirections and desktop popups.
To have Gator and Bonzai Buddy spinning these as helpful utilities is to prey on the most vulnerable of web users who
a) Probably won't be able to identify why their PC becoming so frustratingly slow
b) Probably won't know how to get rid of the program