Limewire Gets Ads, And Accusations of Spyware

Gerard J. Pinzone writes: "Limewire 1.8 now comes with mandatory banner ads. The reasons given by one of their developers, Christopher Rohrs, for the new ads are that 'Bandwidth alone from www.limewire.com, www.limewire.org, and router.limewire.com is around $10,000 month! And we need to pay developer's salaries--like mine--to keep driving innovation on the Gnutella network.' On top of all this, the banner ad software Limewire is using is "Cydoor". Many users are complaining that this is spyware. Here is a link to the message in the Gnutella forums where this topic is being discussed"

Comments

Installation of Cydoor is OPTIONAL!

[MarcQuadra]

Well I installed LimeWire 1.8 a few days ago and it ASKS you if you want to install Gator and/or cydoor. I said no and LimeWire is essentially the same as 1.7 (but with a banner)

Re:Installation of Cydoor is OPTIONAL!

[johnnyproton]

Actually, I also declined to install the 3rd party software. However, it still installed a program called EzStub which consistently begs my firewall to access the internet.

There is no mention of this program in the Windows Registry, either.

Geez

[LS]

Non-story. Limewire is open source. Go download it and remove any ads if you want, whiny bitches:

http://limewire.limewire.org/servlets/ProjectHom e

Re:Geez

[rbeattie]

I was about to call you names back. But then I CVSed the source and low-and-behold, if you download it and compile it yourself (very, very easy with Apache Ant - there's even a batch file to do it) it's the same version (1.8) but WITHOUT the ad stuff. You don't even have to muss with the code.

http://core.limewire.org/servlets/ProjectSource

Very nice. (Thanks for being a jerk.) ;-)

-Russ

Bearshare has it too

[MxTxL]

Bearshare pops up to an immediate ad, and also usually spawns a browser window to show an ad. Pretty annoying, but it's not a big deal to just close the spawned window and get on with your business... not really a big deal if limewire does it... besides, if it helps keep them in business, then i say go for it!

Re:Bearshare has it too

[tcc]

Aside from the fact that when I tried bearshare last year, it DIDN'T ASK me if I wanted to install extra stuff, I was running norton internet security, and guess what I found? A nice little program that was running in the background, ALWAYS pluging EVERY site I was visiting in a database somewhere before going to connect to that typed site I sent, all this transparent if you didn't have any firewalling software installed. (I kept seeing a connection to some place that I didn't know of), I uninstalled bearshare, guess what, it stayed there! (standard uninstaller, not cleansweep or any advanced cleaners).

What pissed me off the most about this is NOWHERE in the install process or the website from front page to download link was this indicated.

I was happy to see alternative to napster, but I was REALLY angry at the fact that people are installing spying crap on my system not EVEN with small notices anywhere in the install or download process! That happened after the REAL.COM spyware fiasco, I thought people learned, I'm sure today it's not doing it anymore for that precise example (after a zillion complain probably)

But WHY do we have to go thru this?? these people should be treated the same way VIRUS WRITERS would be, heck, you can get jailed in some contries just to try to log in a .mil site for fun or do portscanning on any major sites, why the heck do these people install stuff that tracks your every moves and gets out of it with not even a scratch? 20$ you'd write something like that and treat it with a virus label, you'd get fined and jailed! I stopped using bearshare from that day and told all my friends, sent an article here about it and all the specs but it got rejected.

Anyways, I can't beleive people are still pulling that stunt, mandatory banner adds, it's okay in my book, even if it's totally useless and normally it means that the application will die (because who click these adds anyways?! the only advertising system I saw working were porn sites and some loyal people on a specific site (i.e. Here probably). The fact is they SAY so, they WARN you, if you go thru the process and something slows down your system or tracks your moves, at least you know! that's the BIG difference and even if it's almost ironic to say, I guess with all the spycrap around, people being honnest about the stuff they install on your system should get a praise. (yike!!)

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| Bearshare pops up to an immediate ad, and also usually spawns a browser window to show an ad. Pretty annoying, but it's not a big deal to just close the spawned window and get on with your business... not really a big deal if limewire does it... besides, if it helps keep them in business, then i say go for it!

MSN sure has great software

[Anonymous Coward]

You know! I can get great music over at MSN. There is a free media player called the Microsoft Media player which has a special format called WMA. With WMA you can get cd quality over music at only 64k bit-rates! According to the link inside teh the media player settings, its far supperior to mp3! Microsoft also confirms its better as do the major record labels. The record labels recommend it? Wow! This is some great stuff. ALmost as good as AOL. Now AOL is for real hackers. Too bad it doesn't have free music. I am concerned about the thieves who use gnutella. At least I am legal by trusting Microsoft. You should all trust them more often.

Gnutella?

[npietraniec]

Who's still using Gnutella? GiFT just had a breakthrough with the development of ShadowFT

Download it. Give it a try...

Better way to do Ads

[Alien54]

Pud of Fucked Company has a better way to do ads. You can see how he does it here:

www.httpads.com

Basically he allows other people to do impulse buying of ads on his website. Very Interesting, and useful

And yes, he is making money on this angle.

Sick of entitlement

[PureFiction]

And we need to pay developer's salaries--like mine--to keep driving innovation on the Gnutella network.

Gnutella and peer networks in general are going to continue evolving and innovating regardless of whether you specifically are involved.

If there is one thing I hate about all these projects it is the lame excuses for significant and broad invasions of privacy by people who cannot build a decent business model.

Instead they take a short cut, sell privacy invasion for a quick fix, and say that it is all for the good of the user.

Just because it makes money does not mean spyware is a proper or even tolerable method of funding work on your project or business, regardless of what it is.

Peer networks are about empowering and utilizing individuals communicating at the edge of the network. Invading their privacy like this defeats the purpose and sells everyone short.

Isnt a bitch giving things away for free?

[rebelcool]

Of course, if they charged for their software, then there would be no need for ads or spyware.

Re:An Obsession with Spyware!

[H310iSe]

1) spyware is sneaky - you can't just kill it / uninstall it unless you know ... about as much as your average 1st year tech support guy.

2) as The Register recently reminded me outbound filtering is useless against any program that has executed on your computer (because it's easy to piggyback your information on another service that already has outbound permissions) - I'm not sure any spyware does this but...

3) it's fine if someone want to try to track me from somewhere else but my computer in my home is ... well, it's mine, and in my home, it's my private home thing and it's a castle or something (under american law, after all, I can shoot someone if they break into my home so if a spyware sneaks into my computer and stealthily steals (?) from me can't I shoot the CEO of Disney who buys the information to see if I'm a good candidate for the re-release of Snow White?) so THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE UNLESS I INVITE THEM IN (kinda like a vampire, no?)

4) have I mentioned spyware is sneaky? real sneaky - it won't tell you it's installed, it won't (always) register w/ uninstall, it runs all sneaky like and sneaks and stuff.

Poor limewire - they should make money but why can't they do it like NPR, just bug all the limewire users for a week a year for donations?

Kazaa did it to me...

[Sarcasmooo!]

I see people saying try Kazaa instead, but on my system it was Kazaa that installed Cydoor. When I used Ad-aware to remove Cydoor, Kazaa refused to run and told me I had removed files it needed and should reinstall.

Re:An Obsession with Spyware!

[snake_dad]

I'll give you one reason: I'm a software developer, and one of those nasty hidden programs fucked up my system at work so bad that certain tools I have to use would not even start anymore.

It cost me 2 days to find that it was caused by something called newnet2_*.dll (IIRC), which appeared to do something with alternative TLD's. I was damned lucky to find it at that point because by chance I noticed this funny dll-name in the \winnt directory. It came with either Getright or Gozilla, programs that allowed me to resume a rather large download. More info on newnet at counterexploitation.

I did not know about ad-aware at that time. I now run it often, and I use Proxomitron as well. I found proxomitron here, 'official' site is here. Oh, and don't forget to get new definition files for Ad-Aware regularly!