My SHC Community

This application report reviews the My SHC Community software, an application that is installed for a subset of the users who register for the My SHC Community at myshccommunity.com. These users receive an invitation to install the software via e-mail and/or a popup window. Sears Holdings Corporation, which refers to itself as "SHC," is the parent company of Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Kmart.

In this report, StopBadware found that the My SHC Community software is badware because it did not fully disclose the features and functionality of the application in accordance with our guidelines and because it did not clearly identify itself while installed and active.

[Update: February 28, 2008 - StopBadware has deactivated and archived our badware alert about the MySHCCommunity application produced by Sears Holdings Corporation. We deactivate an alert when the prevalent version(s) of the application appear to have addressed the issues we raised in our alert.

With significant input from StopBadware, SHCand developer comScore worked together to implement several changes to the application and the web pages leading up to installation of the application. While the application continues to aggressively monitor Internet usage, the user is now better informed of this behavior prior to installation and is made aware of the application’s presence while it is running.]

For the full text of this report, please visit http://www.stopbadware.org/reports/reportdisplay?reportname=myschcomm01082008