[jgwest]

I think the worst aspect of all these bad actors is how they use misleading language to hide what they are doing.

Consider PrivDog's sales pitch:

PrivDog® protects your privacy while browsing the web and more! Get safer, faster and more private web browsing today!

In fact, the point of the software from PrivDog's perspective is to replace web ads from third-party ad networks with web ads from PrivDog's own third-party ad network -- i.e. AdTrustMedia.

Similar language is used in Lenovo's ex-post-facto sales pitch for Silverfish:

The goal was to improve the shopping experience using their visual discovery techniques.

No, the goal from your point of view was to insert your own advertising network links into user's webpages. And it's installed by default (no need to worry... you can trust your new Lenovo machine!) as a self-encrypted subsystem (which underscores the tricky intentions).

Perhaps the use of misleading language is what primarily leads people to regard these sorts of things as inappropriate bait-and-switch badware installs? The problem is, of course, that these sales techniques work, or at least the offending companies seem to believe that they will work for enough unsophisticated users.