Perhaps InstallShield will view this comment as inappropriate. It represents my strong opinion as an end-user.
Having discovered that the Installshield Update program secretly installed itself on my PC, and that it cannot be uninstalled, I will no longer do business with the software company that incorporates it.
If I had been alerted that Update was being installed, or if there were some way to uninstall it, I might not have harbored any ill will.
A quote from InstallShield's glossary page:
"Spyware is any technology that aids in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge. On the Internet, spyware is programming that is put in someone's computer to secretly gather information about the user and relay it to advertisers or other interested parties. Spyware can get in a computer as a software virus or as the result of installing a new program. Data collecting programs that are installed with the user's knowledge are not, properly speaking, spyware, if the user fully understands what data is being collected and with whom it is being shared."
Complaining to InstallShield about a feature of a vendors installation is a kin to complaining to to Microsoft because someone wrote a crappy VB application.
Most installs are written to be brain dead and bulletproof. The problem seems to be that you have just enough mental activity to notice the auto update feature after the fact, but not enough to have given proper consent when you were doing it. Perhaps instead of this being spyware, the update service will actually enable your vendor to provide fixes to problems in the software they sold you rather then leaving you out in the cold. Only time will tell what the vendor does with it, but I can tell you as an InstallShield developer it's not going to spy on you. Until then please realize that this isn't a soapbox for users, this is a forum for developers.
