2010-07-10 FamilyLink Desktop 1.0
FamilyLink
desktop application
FamilyLink Desktop is a new application for Windows for use with FamilyLink née We're Related from FamilyLink née WorldVitalRecords.
The name leads you to expect something like DynasTree Home Edition née It's Our Tree Home Edition; a FamilyLink-branded genealogy desktop application that allows you to take your FamilyLink data and work offline, but that is not what it is.
FamilyLink is not enabling you to take your data elsewhere. FamilyLink wants you to upload even more data to them.
FamilyLink Desktop 1.0 is not a desktop genealogy application. It is a photo
upload tool.
In both the email and the website, FamilyLink tries to sell you on FamilyLink
Desktop by
claiming that Thousands of photos are trapped on your hard drive. FamilyLink
Desktop software helps you easily share them with family.
, but most users
log into FamilyLink with a FaceBook id, and FaceBook already allows sharing
photos without having to sign up for a third-party party site or installing an
update tool.
secure?
FamilyLink announced FamilyLink Desktop 1.0 through an email to its users
that claims FamilyLink Desktop is FREE software
that makes sharing photos with your family fast, simple ands secure.
. It is
reasonable to wonder whether an ostensible genealogy company whose poor
eponymous product still doesn't support GEDCOM import or export, is at all capable of producing a secure website
for sharing photos, but I did not try to examine the security of the website. I merely
tried out the FamilyLink Desktop product.
I will point out that their TOS disallows
users to probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of any system or network or breach or
circumvent any security or authentication measures
, which strongly suggests that they are afraid you might succeed.
Companies that actually believe in their own security do not forbid you try and
circumvent it, but invite you to do so and offer rewards for
successful breaches.
download and installation
You need to login to FamilyLink to download the FamilyLink Desktop software. As a rule I dislike vendors demanding email or registration, but you cannot use FamilyLink Desktop without being logged in to FamilyLink anyway, so in this case it isn't an issue.
The FamiLinkDesktop-Installer.exe download is slightly more than 2 MB large. Download
is quick and installation is easy, too easy. What the Setup Wizard does not
tell you is that it registers FamilyLinkDesktop.exe for automatic
start-up whenever you boot your machine. According to the Windows Task Manager, FamilyLinkDesktop.exe
takes up almost 10 MB when running.
license agreement
The typical desktop application setup wizard has a dialog that displays the
licensee agreements and demands that you have to agree
to before the
wizards allows you to continue installation. The Setup Wizard for FamilyLink
Desktop is no exception. What is different is that I actually read the entire
thing; it is only one sentence: By installing this software, you agree to abide by the FamilyLink Terms as
outlined on our web site at: http://corporate.familylink.com/tos.htm
.
The license agreement for FamilyLink Desktop is nothing but a link to the Terms of Service of FamilyLink itself. I'll leave analysis of those terms to lawyers, but I am surprised that these terms seem to be about nothing but the FamilyLink services, and do not mention Family Desktop or any other FamilyLink product.
no choice
The installer does not allow you to choose anything. It installs in a
subdirectory Family Desktop in Program Files as it should, but does not create
a desktop icon. It displays a icon on the Windows Taskbar instead. When you
click that icon, the taskbar app opens the FamilyLink Desktop
home page, a page on the
FamilyLink site that refers to FamilyLink Desktop as the FamilyLink Plugin
.
Apparently, FamilyLink Desktop isn't a desktop application, but a
plug-in…
The URL that the desktop app uses includes a large hexadecimal value. Because this probably represents my FamilyLink identity, I've replaced that part of the URL with another value that has the same number of hexadecimal digits.
uploading
After detecting that I have the Family Desktop plug-in running, the FamilyLink site displays the following message:
We're busy finding your photos. Just a moment...
This page will automatically reload until the plugin is ready. This one-time process typically only takes a few minutes. Please keep your computer connected for the next few minutes. Thanks for your patience!
It tells you that it is busy finding your photos
. What it is actually doing is scanning your
hard disks for
images. This did not take a few minutes
, but about half an hour,
and it turned out that FamilyLink Desktop has scanned not just my Pictures
folder, but all my hard disks without asking permission to do so, and was now
uploading thumbnails of these images, again without first asking my permission.
There is some interesting information on the right side of the page with the thumbnails. It states that It may take up to 15 minutes for the FamilyLink Desktop software to detect
new photos added to your hard drive.
, which suggests that the FamilyLink
Desktop tries to scans your drives every fifteen minutes - while it takes half
an hour to complete a single scan…
It also states File types supported: .JPG, .JPEG
, which is pathetic
graphics support. It may not be reasonable to expect support for RAW formats,
but a Windows application should support BMP and a web application should
support PNG. Supporting nothing but JPG, arguably one of the worst image formats
ever, is odd to say the least.
Grabbing thumbnails of your photos without your permission is theft.
uploaded
FamilyLink grabbed screenshots of other products, photos I made for Logitech Illuminated Keyboard review, an obituary I downloaded from a Dutch site, scans I recently downloaded from FindMyPast, photos I made of members of parliament distributing flyers to win voters for their party, and much more. None of these are photos I intended to upload to FamilyLink. I never indicated that I wanted to upload these photos or thumbnails of these photos. FamilyLink did so without asking or informing me.
Although that would be more logical, and provide much better performance,
Family Desktop does not apparently does not create those thumbnails on your
desktop. The text on the FamilyLink site clearly states that the thumbnails are
uploaded, and a quick check of a few image URLs confirms it. The URLs for the
images do not start with file:// but with https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.familylink.com/.
FamilyLink uploads thumbnails of all your images to its site without your
permission. Perhaps FamilyLink's thinking is that you will be less hesitant to
upload the full resolution image when they already have a thumbnail. My thinking
is that they do not have any right to grab that thumbnail.
Grabbing thumbnails of your photos without your permission is theft.
misleading
FamilyLink advertises FamilyLink Desktop as a desktop application that makes
sharing easy, but that is not what it is. The email they sent to FamilyLink
users to announce FamilyLink Desktop claims that Uploads are automatic and happen quietly in the background once you choose which photos you want to share.
(my emphasis), but that is not true. FamilyLink Desktop creates and uploads thumbnails of every image it finds
without asking for your permission.
The FamilyLink site does not provide any means to delete the thumbnails.
limitation advantage
Family Desktop's failure to support anything but JPG turned out to be an advantage; I have thousands of images on my hard disks, yet Family Desktop recognised only a few hundred, simply because most images are in either BMP or PNG format.
conclusion
FamilyLink Desktop 1.0 for Windows is a Windows taskbar app that uploads photos to the FamilyLink web site. You can choose which photos to uploads, but FamilyLink Desktop starts by uploading thumbnails without your permission and FamilyLink does not provide an option to delete those thumbnails from their site.
FamilyLink asks you trust them, but immediately violates your trust by grabbing thumbnails of every photo it finds. FamilyLink Desktop is malware.
product details
| property | value |
|---|---|
| product | FamilyLink Desktop |
| version | 1.0 for Windows |
| company | FamilyLink |
| website | FamilyLink |
| price | free |
| requirement | Windows |
| note | |
| Verdict | malware |
| Rating | uninstall |
links
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