Do you accept Spyware?

I had recently updated my Limewire (which I loved). During the install procedure I noticed the "by the way we need to pay our 6 new programmer's salaries so...blah blah...advertisement" message. WHAT??? I was not amused. Oh well...
I was even less amused when the install procedure proceeded to reboot (damn!) and I ended up with the NT blue screen of death (yikes!!!). "Last known configuration" failed, my ERD failed, I was getting nervous by now. VGA boot passed and I was able to weed out most of the malignant spies from my registries (at least 4) and windows (dlls) using Lavasft Ad-Aware. I then found and ran aureateremove.exe. I am still unable to reboot and service packs didn't help either. It's format c:\ and re-install everything. Nice. Really nice.
Spies are one thing, blowing up my workstation is another.
Can anyone out here recommend a basic stable spy-free gnutella client for me ol' NT?
Many thanks,
Scalded.
 
I'm sorry John you are soooo wrong. Gator is one of the "best" spyware and slimeware. Yes, it "helps" you fill in your form while it checking out where and what you doing on the net. One other great "helper without the spyware is "roboform"( http://www.roboform.com/), it's even have a password "generator". Recoment by PC Magazin becauce it have no spyware. An other "super" spy is "Bonzi", it will take over, even change you browzer, and all the time it will tell you "why don't we go to my favorit sites" and the it takes to a shop site.
I using "ADWare" to clean out all spyware about every day or when i closeing down my internet conection. (Ok so I'm little paranoid, but every week i kill about 5 - 10 spyware that I have got'n on line.)
 
Good that we have GNU and many different open source movements together with a high count of alternative free software! Free of spyware and marketing promises.
Btw I thought XP is based on Win NT/2000 kernel and only winsock(2) is "borrowed" from BSD networking code?
 
Do you want to know how to force people to accept your spyware? Simple, do like RadLight did and HAVE YOUR INSTALLER UNINSTALL AD AWARE FROM THE USER'S MACHINE WHEN THEY INSTALL YOUR PRODUCT!

Here's the link to the Ad Aware message boards with the story:

http://www.lavasoft.nu/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?s=3cc6d78b0d68ffff;act=ST;f=20;t=13

EDIT: Addendum: The author of RadLight stated that he was trying to prove a point that since Ad Aware forces the removal of spyware -- the only component to allow some developers to make money from their products -- that he would force the removal of Ad Aware to get his point across... his point being that Ad Aware, in his opinion, participates in the illegal removal of legally installed software (adware/spyware components). Of course, it backfired on him big time, but I suppose that was to be expected.
 
Yes,

simply the best way, its no problem for you, but you suggest all "windows" user to install this crap... Gator and other spytools are a really security risks... but only for windows users...

John if you believe they are harmful, I know thousands of people who said they "might" be really dangerous... and many of this people aren
 
Hi again!
When you install programs that come with spyware... and uninstall it afterwards, don't believe the spyware is gone. No, the spyware will usually be still on your computer, and stay for ever. The uninstaller will NOT remove it! Great features, yeah. *cough*

Take a fresh copy of AdAware today and clean your system.
This Gnutella spyware story is becoming more ironic, the more knowledge I get of it. If you're interested continue reading:

The Gnutella spyware story.... a modern tale.
(Approved for all audiences)

In a network not far away from here some vendors needed money in lack of a busines model. They had no idea how to make money with file sharing, so they thought, hey let's bundle spyware tools to my installer and name them "Addins". That sounds cool, the newbies will love it and I get some good bucks from the Spyware industry. Said and done. Everyone should be happy... they thought.
Whenever someone asks questions, they lie about the existens of spyware or name it harmless "commercials ads". When someone continues asking "but we found Spyware", they tell us "you are spreading rumours" or "creating new FBI X-cases" to make us silent. The vendor continues hardly denying the existence of any spyware. After a while more people confirming spyware does exist. Some news sites and two webmasters of anti-spyware sites underlined the existance, the danger and the damage caused by spyware. Suddenly silence. More serious spyware is found and we still hear the vendor, let's call him Chris, singing a silent "no it's no spyware" or a little bit later "we didn't know, we are nice guys and everything is optional". Funny, because that's the next lie. Or as some people would say, a very creative way of telling the truth. What happened? One spyware tool was silently always installed, without asking for permission or telling the user. Some people stopped to trust Chris now, some still believe him.
At this time another vendor, let's call him Vinnie, is congratulating the first one. Vinnie is telling us that Addins are a good solution, a final solution! And both tell each other how great they are. Hmm, he slighlty forgot to mention that "Addins" are Spyware. Now you wonder? Yes that would be the normal reaction for sure. But what you didn't know, that this other vendor has a long and well know history of spyware. Vinnie bundled spyware to his product long before Chris did and caused a lot of annoyance, perhaps even more than Chris did. A quick flashback: the same story, denying spyware, fooled users and many corrupted computers because of a bad installer (which resulted in a complete Windows reinstall for many users, urks). Finally Vinnie made the spyware full optional at install time. Okay the spyware is still there and will infect hundreds of newbie users which still don't know that Addins are spyware parasites... but at least this vendor has learned something. Probably he lost hundreds of users and gained a bad reputation too.

Back to the first vendor of our story. Chris is still not sure if he wants to learn from the past... and continues to ship his new version with Spyware. Chris is not on the dark side of Gnutella, if you ask now. No, no! He does a lot of interesting research for the Gnutella community, he is a friendly guy helping other developers and makes his whole work open source. Wow, nice guy we would normally say. The only problem is, in Spyware he sees a way of paying his bills and we know bills must be paid. "How sad", some people say and stop using his Gnutella client.
On Chris's homepage he still denies that spyware is spyware. He wants to make people believe that "Addins" are no risk, he probably also believes in it. So he writes on his homepage in the security section: "We do not consider this bundled software to be spyware because it does not report any personal information. Users are not required to install this software but it helps defer costs". Do you wonder again? Sure a lot of people do, after what we undigged up to now. More people believed that Chris and Vinnie have a very creative handling of the truth.
Meanwhile some interested users investigated the truth on their own, not believing in vendor promises anymore. They found some websites and pro-privacy hacker which provided more background information, just look around you will find it too.
Finally it is confirmed that not only one spyware tool is bundled, many of them are... you can imagine more spyware, more money. Also the so called "Addins" get not uninstalled when you uninstall the Gnutella program. Users that unfortunately believed in vendors like Chris and his friend Vinnie will be spyed out for ever (or until the next harddisk crash or next installed windows version)! Oh wait, there are more embarrassing details. Some "Addins" come with the ability to get the newest spyware tools automatically! For example one 'hidden secret' of those sweet and highly technical parasites is, that some can automatically download more executable spyware code. Wow, without notice or permission. Don't wonder, but I think you don't wonder anymore. Those spyware tools are designed to spy out users much longer than Chris and Vinnie are in business and have a long history of abuse and improvement. Perhaps even they didn't know. They never looked inside the internal spyware code and they don't have a clue of what backdoor features are included. For example one spyware tool is named Gator. It's very smart and does download more spyware code in a tricky way. Whenever the user goes online it might use a minimum bandwith to download more executable code. The user will not notice it.

The end of the story? No, stay tuned for part two when we tell more about Vinnie, Chris, the big boss behind and a new shining knight that fights for Gnutella and suddenly falls again. Expect loyal users of Vinnie starting a unholy war against other vendors, some others denying the past, some fighting on the ground of P2P, with more lies, more propaganda and more action!!! Maybe we see more spyware creatures and maybe Trinitry in a naked role. Who's Trinitry? I don't know yet, the future isn't written, I thought it sounds cool for a teaser of the next episode and I was trying to be creative with the truth too.

To be continued....

PS: I guess you don't wonder why I wrote this tale... I'm angry about some people trying to fool us. I understand that programmers need money, I'm a programmer too and need to pay my rent or buy my food, daily caffeine (Coke) and high bandwith internet. But I first don't like people who tries to fool me and second I don't like dirty money. Right now the Gnutella developer community is a crowd of many volunteers, who did improve Gnutella free and together. Only two vendors try to make money with Gnutella, both do not have the most famous client yet. I don't want to be unfair, actually fairness was the reason for this story. I highly appreciate any work and research for the Gnutella community, but not for any cost and not without truth. Feel free to call me a rabble rouser now, I don't care. If Chris and Vinnie would be real persons in the real world I would say, please let's work together and find a way for paying your bills.

Link to AdAware again
 
BTW, ad aware has also detected spyware on Radiate Advertising, a program that comes with Go!Zilla. Since Gator is also promoted by Go!Zilla, i'm not quite surprised. I agree, leaving all your personal info and passwords in an encripted file is a dangerous thing to do. Anyone could enter your computer, take that file, and do a mess in your computer, email account or whatever. I uninstalled Radiate Advertising and I couldn't get Go!Zilla to work any more. But the truth is I never liked the last version.

Ivan
"In the dark we make a brighter light"
 
If I don't belive in a problem, there is no problem?

No, there is a big difference between cookies which will be send back to one webpage and a hidden systematic data mining together with collected confidental private data and user profiles given to third parties. Last is what national secret agencies do = spying.

John is like a young cat. My teacher told me a story from her little cat when I was in school, her cat tried once to hide from my teacher by looking away. The cat thought, when I can not see someone they can't see me.
 
"The Washington Post is reporting that a number of publishers, including the Washington Post, is suing Gator Corp. over their obnoxious spyware, saying that Gator is "a parasite that free rides on the hard work and investment" of other people's web sites. The lawsuit alleges that Gator's spyware contributes to trademark infringement, misappropriation of the news, and represents unfair competition." Found on Slashdot.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52132-2002Jun26.html
 
It won't make much difference soon. Looks like FreePeers has decided to bundle Cydoor with Bearshare. That may turn out to be the final spyware nail in BearShare's coffin.
 
For the records... recent spyware bundler did deliver a new trojan/spyware (DLDER) together with their clients. Those have been our old and well known spyware friends:

- Bearshare (Gnutella clone)
- LimeWire (Gnutella clone)
- Kazaa (FastTrack clone)
- Grokster (FastTrack clone)

If you did recently use one of those client, make sure you use a _new_ anti virus (TrendMicro) or anti spyware tool (AdAware) today! You won't see any warning on the webpages of those vendors, but the existance was proofen on many webpages:

http://wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,49430,00.html
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8335745.html
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/intern...y.ap/index.html
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/articles/auto/01012002a.php
http://www.bearshare.net/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8252
http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6423
http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6781

It seems those vendors do not have controll over their spyware, sorry boys, but isn't it true? The new trojan/spyware was allways installed without asking the user (non optional), the vendors rated this piece of software 'Adware'.

If you don't like Spyware - don't use it. Choose a spyware free gnutella client!

PS: LimeWire finally issued an official statement: http://www.limewire.com/index.jsp/trojan
 
You know , what some of these companies ought to do is what Opera does with their web browser. Cydoor is in Opera, but it doesn't operate unless you are running the program, and doesn't have a separate .dll that resides outside of the program.

Most of us appreciate having full time developers working on programs, I know I do. I also know that bandwidth and servers take time and money to upkeep, so I dont mind supporting good programs with a few ads and whatnot, but HATE popups and porn banners interrupting my downloads (CLUE: I am not interested in porn, and even if I were, I'm sure not going to go give my credit card to some foreign, oRABhore scammer, HELLOOOOOOOOOO!!)

Topmoxie and ezula are totally unacceptable, gator maybe useful, I dont trust it with my info anymore than I trust Microsoft Wallet, or Passport. These programs absolutely betray your trust to profiteers and scumlords. They also ripoff webmasters who are relying on ads for their website to operate, although as a business plan ads seem to leave a lot to be desired, even slashdot has a subscription now.

In short they need to find a better way to roll ads into the product
without being intrusive, and give users a means to opt-out of ALL bundled software if they want.
 
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