I got a link to a coupon for a free KFC grilled chicken meal from coupontweet today. The coupon is at unthinkfc.com and this promotion is supposedly in conjunction with the Oprah Winfrey Show. The first thing I noticed on clicking the "Print Coupon" link is it didn't support Opera. I tried that again in IE. This time, it went to a link to download couponprinter.exe, which the website claimed it needed in order to print barcodes. Now, wait a minute. I've gotten online coupons many times before without having to install special software. Some of those coupons, e.g. Borders coupons, even had barcodes. So it didn't seem right that I should have to install the software.
I did a web search and came across this article about coupons.com and their coupon software. Granted, the article is a year old and coupons.com may have changed the software since then but it alleges that the software adds deceptively-named files and registry entries and doesn't remove those when uninstalled. In addition, there are privacy issues because the software collects far more information from the system than it needs to track which coupons the user has printed. Although the software may not be doing anything harmful, its behavior is closer to that of malware than a consumer application. I think (or unthink) I'll pass.
I did have grilled chicken at KFC in Ramsey this evening, but I used a direct mail coupon instead.