Marketed as a program to add graphical skins to IE toolbars, it also adds its own toolbar with context-sensitive link/search buttons.
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.
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.
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.
Yes. Hotbar can silently download and execute arbitrary code from its controlling server, as an update feature.
None known.
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
Sometimes the installer gets 'stuck' and won't install Hotbar properly. "Add/Remove Programs" still works in this case.