If you create or distribute software applications, please ensure that those applications do not put their users at risk.

StopBadware has developed a set of software guidelines that are based on user rights and expectations for privacy and the security of personal information, and for the full disclosure of application behaviors. Please read our guidelines for greater detail. We welcome questions from software producers who are uncertain about how these guidelines apply to their products.

When StopBadware tests an application and finds that it violates our guidelines, it issues an alert, and in some cases also a more in-depth report. Our alerts and reports can be found here.

Before making an alert public, we do our best to contact the producer of the application, generally two business days before the planned release of the alert. We do this to ensure that our alerts are factually accurate, and to offer an opportunity for software makers to respond. In some cases, applications have been modified before the alert is published, allowing us to publicize a success story instead of the original alert. In other cases, we have been able to note that a software producer is working on modifying the application to meet our recommendations.

If you are the producer of a software application that we have labeled as badware and you believe that you have modified the application to fully comply with our guidelines, please contact us to request that we test the application again.