Declaration of Rights for Administrators and End Users

One network administrator, Susan Bradley, proposed a “Declaration of Rights for Administrators and End Users,” published recently on Patch Management.org.

Frustrated with having to deal with unwanted software being installed on her network, Bradley suggests something be done about it in this Declaration. “As an administrator, as an end user, I demand that you do not make me have to ensure I read every screen, click every click to only get the software that I thought I was getting. I agreed to install one application from one vendor. I did not give you the right to insert a tool bar that gathers information from me. I did not give you the right to pre-check ‘yes’ to installing additional software,” Bradley states in her Declaration.

Bradley’s concern was raised when she discovered the Google Toolbar was automatically installed when she downloaded an update of Sun’s Java Runtime Environment software.