Description

Marketed as a program to add graphical skins to IE toolbars, it also adds its own toolbar with context-sensitive link/search buttons.

Distribution

Bundled with older releases of iMesh and other free software; more recently, advertised through junk e-mail purporting to be a Microsoft upgrade to Outlook.

What it does

Advertising

Yes. HotBar's toolbar grows buttons on the left-hand side leading to advertisers' and/or paid search sites dependent on the site you are currently viewing.

Privacy violation

Yes. HotBar sends the address of every web site you visit to its controlling servers along with a unique ID that would enable your web usage habits to be tracked. Some sites are monitored more closely, with full URLs and/or data entered into forms being sent to HotBar.

Security issues

Yes.

Hotbar can silently download and execute arbitrary code from its controlling server, as an update feature.

Stability problems

None known.

Removal

Should be removable from 'Add/Remove Programs' on the Control Panel, under the name 'HotBar' or 'Web Tools by Hotbar'.

Version 3 of the software leave some mess behind in the registry, which you can clean up by running regedit if you want. Keys you can delete:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Hotbar
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Hotbar
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Hotbar
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\B195B3B3-8A05-11D3-97A4-0004ACA6948E
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\User Agent\Post Platform\Hotbar 3.0

Partial installs

Sometimes the installer gets 'stuck' and won't install Hotbar properly. "Add/Remove Programs" still works in this case.