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Disable Yahoo! and Google Toolbars From Loading In IE7

I maintain a number of networks for local churches and para-church ministries, and am constantly dealing with problems that arise because of people installing stuff on computers that they shouldn't be installing stuff on.

Somewhere along the way, it seems most employees forgot that the computer in front of you does not belong to them, it belongs to the company, and therefore you have no right to install software other than what they install, and/or are authorized to install.

Every time I sit down in front of a computer to work on it, I am faced with dealing with such software.

Of course, I could very easily change user permissions from "administrator" to "user", and thus keep them from installing anything, but such permissions often conflict with programs like Quickbooks.

One of the most annoying things that people install onto their computer are "toolbars" for their browsers. Just about every computer I work on ends up having either the Yahoo! Toolbar or the Google Toolbar (or worse, some no-name search engines toolbar).

A friend and I were talking about this today -- he maintains about 900 computers for a school district -- and we resolved to find a way to keep people from installing those stupid toolbars!

After a nice dinner and installing a security camera system at a local church we headed back to my place and set out to find a way to do this.

Thankfully, it did not take very long!

While it is not all that hard to find, I figured I would post this, for the other network admin's out there that might not have discovered this yet!

For anybody who has a network server in place, you will end up having to do this on every computer in your network.

However, this will disable it for ALL users on each computer! So, if you have 5 people using one computer, no worries... this will disable the ability to have IE Toolbars on all 5-users!

Also, this is only going to work on XP Pro or XP Media. Sorry, but XP Home is pretty much worthless, and doesn't allow you to do this... and, why are you using "XP Home" in an office (???)

Also, this does not actually keep toolbars from being installed, rather it keeps the toolbars themselves from displaying inside of IE7. From what we can tell, it does still load them into memory.
cf: Tools -> Internet Options -> Programs - Manage add-ons -> Add-ons currently loaded in Internet Explorer

Ok, here is what you will need to do:

Get to a command prompt.

Type "gpedit.msc"

The "Group Policy" window will come up.

Drill down like this:

Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Internet Explorer -> Internet Control Panel -> Advanced ->> "Allow third-party browser extentions" -> "Disabled"

Here is a screen shot:

posted: 01/23/2007 09:58pm by abelajohnb View: Backlinks, Permalink Total Views: 6250 ShortURL: http://christianblog.com/2230 Category: Internet / Technology	Print This Blog Entry
Blog Tags: annoyances, google, group policy, toolbars, windows, yahoo,
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Mr. Abela,

Your blog raises a question of concern for me as a user of my company's computer. Is there any harm done when the browser toolbars are installed? Your post does not address this area in positve or negitive light.

I am a "Googlehead" and do have the toolbar installed. (Confession, I installed it on my work computer.) I like the larger text area offered in the toolbar, the Firefox default has a Google search, but the text area is quit small and I don't see a way to relocate it or increase it's size.

Back to the point, is having them a matter of liking them or not or can they do "damage" to the computer?(I don't really want to pay for the $'s to have a tech to come in and fix a mess I may have foolishly created.)

I do respect and appreciate your take on the "acting like it's my computer" and not respecting company policy on software installations. Thanks for the post and any additional info on any harm these may or may not cause.

Thank You,
GreyBear

Posted 01/24/2007 05:40am
Author: greybear

Hello,

I have not personally encountered a time when the Yahoo! or Google Toolbars have caused damage to a computer. Rather my issues is employees installing software they have no business installing on computers that do not belong to them.

My friend and his school district recently encountered a rather serious problem with the Yahoo! bar. On about 90% of their 900+ computers, when they upgraded from IE6 to IE7, computers with the Yahoo! toolbar simply failed to open. In fact, as he explained it, when you clicked on the IE button, rather than IE7 loading it would create another shortcut on the desktop. (and continue to do so as long as you presed the IE button) They are some of the sharpest guys I know of in the industry, and if they cannot figure out what is wrong, something is seriously wrong. For them, they had to uninstall the Yahoo! Toolbar on hundreds of computers (manually), then and only than did Internet Explorer 7 load properly. So, for them, not allowing toolbars to load helps to enforce the policies set in place that state installing software is not allowed.

I cannot state how they may, or may not, cause risk inside of FireFox. I would suspect there would be little to no threat. The FireFox community is rather large - though it does not dominate the market share that IE6 and IE7 do - so I would tend to think if there was a security flaw in either of them, it would be publicly know rather fast.

As for your issue of the SearchBar being too small in FireFox, might I suggest using this extension . It is what I used for a long time, up until I switched over to IE7 as my primary browser. I just continue to be amazed at the massive amount of RAM that FireFox consumes, compared to IE7. I have often times forgotten to close down FireFox before I go to bed, and when I wake up, it has consumed a half-gig to over an entire gig of RAM. That's just crazy and stupid. I have left IE7 open for three days and it never even got close to consuming a half-gig of RAM. Plus, I find IE7 to load pages much faster, enough though I have modified FireFox to make more connections and other such tips to attempt to speed it up.

To go back and answer your question... I am not aware of any "security issues" related to either toolbar, but I have heard of horror stories about them, and I just don't like the idea of toolbars sending my browsing history back to Yahoo! or Google. Even in IE7 I completely disable (on a group policy level) their stupid Phishing feature, which is a possible tracking system.

Hope this answers your question. Sorry I did not address this in my initial blog text... this Blog was mainly directed toward fellow network administrators.

John B. Abela

Posted 01/24/2007 06:09am
Author: abelajohnb

I see what your saying, but I think that is an invasion of privacy. I am sure if you had a talk with the computer users they would respect your request. We have a missionary in China and she is constantly having cameras in her house and work area. Even if you don't plan on doing anything wrong, it is awful to always know there is a camera looking at you. I respectfully feel that you should consider other options.

Posted 06/02/2007 05:03pm
Author: followerofchrist

to answer GB's question about toolbars... ethical issues aside, any toolbar, Google, Yahoo, pick one. They install tracking cookies, and collect user information to help those in marketing collect demographic information. The demographic information includes what ads you click on, what online merchants you frequent... This information is then STORED on the user's computer and then transmitted to the company that installed the toolbar.
(I used to work for a major bank/credit card company that experimented with a toolbar, ostensibly to be of help and assistance to customers with passwords and purchases, but also collected that kind of information.)

Posted 06/02/2007 06:50pm
Author: blackrose65

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