Dangerous installers

It’s long been a rule of mine to avoid broadband providers’ installer software whenever possible. (As Mos Def’s character says in “The Italian Job”: I HAD A BAD EXPERIENCE.)

The intrepid Daniel Jalkut recently posted a great dissection of a Verizon “upgrade” script gone off the tracks, explaining why it was so bad and how it could have been even worse – hard-drive-wipingly worse.

It didn’t even stuff a bunch of Verizon marketing bookmarks in there to pretty up the browser. Just a big gaping hole where my bookmarks (in the bookmark bar and menu) used to be…

The installer is based on a collection of sloppy AppleScripts, and the author was kind enough to leave the offending AppleScript’s source code intact in the shipping image. I know the answer to my question above: was it skill or dumb-luck that caused my Bookmarks to be backed up? It was definitely dumb-luck. In fact, it was a sloppy piece of programming that led to that remnant being left around.

Just say no.