One of the problems with the many *wares (adware, spyware, nastyware, etc) is deciding whether or not there is an acceptable place for ads in software. Both the Opera web browser and Eudora email client did this for years and no one really batted an eyelid. Well, neither were massively popular but no one complained loudly.

But where do you draw the line? And who decides? One company that includes ads in their software got rather hot under the collar when PC Tools removed their software from computers without asking the user first.

So much so that Zango took PC Tools to court because but then dropped the complaint last week.

In some respects, Zango's decision to go to court in the first place seemed odd, especially the timing as they were in the process of being reclassified by PC Tools.

As I used Eudora for a couple of years, I don't have a problem with some form of advertising to support a service. For that matter I use GoogleMail and that has advertising.

Having said that, I would be cautious about using Zango, not least because another security service, McAfee Site Advisor, ranks the site as red with 456 red downloads and links to other red sites.