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Spyware in Kazaa, Limewire, Grokster

Posted by michael on from the comp.risks dept.

BigMacMike writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle (via the sfgate.com website) has a story that Kazaa, LimeWire, and others have secretly hidden software in their applications that track users' browsing habits." Not the first time. The corporate response is that they literally didn't know what was in these secondary applications that they were providing to be downloaded and installed alongside their primary program. Believe it if you wish.

7 of 364 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Double Edged Sword... by Cheshire+Cat · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Free music has a price, and it's really not all that bad if your computer doesnt have anything REALLY incriminating on it


    This is frighteningly similar to the arguement that if you have nothing to hide, why, you won't mind the police searching your house. Its not the fact that I'm trying to hide something, I just feel that its an intrustion of my privacy when programs report my activities to a third party.

    --

    Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
  2. If the information was they collect was useless... by stefanlasiewski · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If the information they collect was useless, then they would not collect the information.

    --
    "Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
  3. This one backfired on them... by sjehay · · Score: 2, Insightful
    It would appear that the stuff bundled with LimeWire is flagged up by antivirus software - oops... bit of a mistake there :-)

    I quote:

    It has come to Lime Wire's attention over the past 24 hours that one of the bundled software installers included with LimeWire 2.0.2 for the PC is now considered a SpyWare/Trojan by various anti-virus software packages. We have received complaints from our users and we have worked quickly to resolve this issue by putting out a new beta immediately yesterday and rolling LimeWire 2.0.3 for the PC into production at 3:30PM EST today (Jan 1. Note that this did not affect LimeWire 2.0.2 P (LimeWire PRO) users.. We will be communicating further with LimeWire 2.0.2 PC users as information becomes available.

    Workaround for all of this nonsense: don't download the Windows-specific version, get one of the ones without an installer (such as the Linux or Solaris versions) from here and use that instead. It removes one layer of laziness as you have to install the JRE and make the icon yourself, but it does mean that the ONLY code that LimeWire can install and execute on your system is a) visible and b) written in Java, which means it can't do anything too evil (read: anything platform-specific).

    Hope this helps...

  4. SaveNow Must Die! by fm6 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    There's all kinds of nasty spyware and adware out there, but the one that raises my blood pressure is SaveNow/WhenUShop. This is supposedly a voluntary opt-in system, but some program (probably BearShare) installed it covertly on my system and didn't remove it when I uninstalled.

    The lost of privacy was bad enough, but SaveNow seems to work by hooking into Windows Explorer and intercepting a great many application events. For a long time I blammed the resulting performance hit on a combination of my own excessive system tweaking, buggy Explorer plugins, and MS software bloat. It wasn't until Explorer froze up totally that I realized some background process was interfering with it, and found the culprit by process of elimination.

    It strikes me that this is not very different from activities that have gotten people sued or even arrested. It's all there -- unauthorized access, theft of services, malicious action. Perhaps it's time we gave Mister Ashcroft a call!

  5. Re:get rid of all spy ware by debrain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A point of interest: If all the intellectually affluent people know how to, and indeed do, uninstall spyware, and this margin is not taken into account by the people that are recepients of the spyware data, would this not lead to a sponsoring of a dumber internet by promoting the sites that attract, well, the less technically fortunate?

    Suppose HP (who is advertising here right now, by the looks of it) is looking to advertise on the net - if the spyware data they buy shows that Slashdot, for example, is hardly even notable on the top spyware list, would this not be detrimental to Slashdot's (or rather VA's) efforts to make a buck off advertising, and in particular directed advertising? Advertisements that are possibly better directed to Slashdot may go to PC Magazine (for lack of a more appropriate choice) or other "mainstream" service.

    Of course, when advertising a car, Slashdot is hardly well-directed advertising and is oft notably a selection of people most fortunate technically, but there is probably a clear area where the technically inclined can find better content on any topic over the internet that spyware would never reveal statistically.

  6. Funny how Tivo is ok to /. tho ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    i hear all the /.'ers condemming software spyware but then they seem perfectly comfortable with Tivo logging their viewing habits then selling it to advertisers ?

  7. You installed that spyware. by toofast · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A friend of mine worked at webHancer for a while. Trust me, there's a nice dialog that:
    1. tells you what webHancer is
    2. tells you what webHancer does
    3. asks you if you want to install audiogalaxy with or without it.

    I've installed audiogalaxy several times, and all you have to do is uncheck the check box. But most people click "Next" without even reading the dialogs.

    You consented to it. That doesn't make it spyware, it makes it ignorantware.