Darkoshi

Based on an articles such as these, I've gone ahead and disabled Java in my browsers:

• Java Security Fix Issued By Oracle, Feds Maintain Warning To Users


• Serious Flaw in Java Software Is Found, Then Patched


• How to turn off Java on your browser - and why you should do it now

As it turns out, I had a fairly old version of Java on my machine, due to having turned off updates a couple of years ago. So I updated to the Java version with the latest patches (1.7.0_11) and turned updates back on. As I had disabled Java in the browsers, I decided to have Java to check for updates on a weekly rather than daily basis.

The next day after I booting my computer, my ESET firewall notified me that Java Update Scheduler (jusched.exe) was attempting to access the internet. In order to track how often Java was checking for updates, I only gave it temporary permission and did not create a firewall rule for it yet. I also changed the Java settings to check monthly instead of weekly, to see if that would make a difference.

Yet jusched.exe still attempts to access the internet every day! I'm not even clear why jusched.exe is accessing the internet. From what I understand, it is only a scheduler, and jucheck.exe is the program which should check for updates.

In addition, the Java "Automatic Update Advanced Settings" dialog is quite odd. There isn't really a setting to control how often it checks for updates. There is only a setting to control how often you are *notified* of updates.



When you select "Weekly", it says, "Java will check every Sunday at 12:00AM and notify you within 7 days".

When you select "Monthly", it says "Java will check weekly on Sunday and notify you within 30 days".

Regardless if you select weekly or monthly, it claims that it will check weekly. Furthermore, what is the point of checking for updates but then waiting 7 or 30 days to notify you that updates are available? I would expect a program to notify me of available updates right after it has checked and found them. I want to control how often it checks for them, not how long it waits to tell me about them after it finds them.

I believe that this is why I turned off updates 2 years ago - it annoys me the settings dialog claims that it will check weekly when in fact it checks daily, and that I can't control how often it checks for updates.

This page explains how to set up your own task in Windows Task Scheduler to check for updates, rather than using the Java Update Scheduler. But each time this task runs, you'll get at least 1 popup window which you'll have to close, even when no updates are available.

I feel that one shouldn't have to go through that much trouble... I'm feeling rather disappointed by Java, which is a shame as it is currently my preferred programming language.