Viewpoint - A Spyware and Astroturfing Debate?

Spazntwich wonders: "Lately, the Viewpoint Corporation has gained attention by being the subject of many debates on whether or not it spreads spyware. Of special interest is its media player which is installed by default with all recent versions of AIM, as a 'required' component. Its difficulty of successful un-installation coupled with its generally suspicious nature of installation and tendency to 'phone home' have drawn many accusations of spyware, but Viewpoint maintains otherwise. They feel so strongly about this that they've even managed to get their software removed from the spyware lists of SpyBot and other anti-spyware vendors, though nobody seems to know whether this was done voluntarily by the vendors or under threat of litigation. Viewpoint claims a strong anti-spyware policy on their site." Is Viewpoint spyware or not, and what have your experiences been with it? "Of special interest as of late are Viewpoint's apparent plans to begin serving ads through their media player and an astroturfing campaign that can only be described as aggressive and obvious, which you can see demonstrated in the comments of several previously linked articles as well in a discussion on SearchEngine Journal and a discussion thread on AskLeo. A favorite pseudonym of the campaign(ers?) seems to be Michael Tzez, and googling the name demonstrates just how extensive a campaign the company is waging.

I'm curious as to the Slashdot community's thoughts on this."

Comments

Oh My

[Flame0001]

Viewpoint thinks it's not a bad thing? There's something wrong here.

My personal experience with Viewpoint was that I had three Viewpoint applications installed on my computer. The media player, the toolbar, and one other one. I could not open Firefox nor Internet Explorer. It simply wouldn't happen no matter what I tried. Scannings for adware/spyware/malware didn't work, until I was finally able to narrow it down to Viewpoint. After uninstalling the Viewpoint apps, my computer worked perfectly.

I'm still reeling that they're trying to put themselves off as NotEvil(TM).

How to remove?

[$exyNerdie]

Viewpoint Media Player is a program that is installed during the installation of AOL Instant Messenger that is a plugin for displaying graphical content in the software's own proprietary format. According to the software's end user license agreement, Viewpoint Media Player collects usage information and forwards it to Viewpoint servers. Each installation of Viewpoint Media Player contains a unique alphanumeric identification number that can be used to uniquely identify an installation of the software.

A successful attempt to remove Viewpoint Media Player while AOL Instant Messenger is still installed will cause AOL Instant Messenger to reinstall Viewpoint Media Player the next time AOL Instant Messenger is run. This advertising can be completely removed however with third-party hacks.

To remove ad's from AIM: http://aimadhack.webhop.net/

NOTE: I don't use AIM so I would not know if the fix really works or not...

(Thx wikipedia for the info)

Re:guilty as charged

[TubeSteak]

I dunno about spyware, but my understanding is that ViewPoint is the AIM component that plays the audio/video adverts.

Removing it is fairly straight forward.... Close AIM, uninstall ViewPoint from the "Add/Remove Programs" in the Control Panel, then delete the ViewPoint folder.

How is that hard?

After you remove it, I think AIM serves up 'normal' ads. I wouldn't know because there's about a million AIM ad removers and I used one of them before reverting back to an older version of AIM.

Not bundled into AOL UK

[virtualXTC]

I just went to aol.co.uk/aim installed their version on my girlfriend's machine (yes I do actually have one so spare me the jokes). It doesn't seem to have the Viewpoint BS bundled with it, has less pop-ups and is way less annoying.

Re:It boggles my mind

[Jherico]

I want to change my vote. After reading some stuff here and looking at their site some more it looks like they've taken an incredibly valuable web technology, and are driving it into the ground, trying to turn it into some quick and nasty ad revenue generator. I also can't imagine why a media player (or anything for that matter) should be sending out encrypted packets to someplace I don't have a keypair with.

Earthlink in the UK?

[way2trivial]

Here (USA) it's common knowledge among those who make frequent dell purchases-- choose earthlink over AOL, because earthlink is easier to remove when you get the box....

Re:guilty as charged

[Lehk228]

AIM reinstalled viewpoint the next time it is run,m that was the behavior about a year and a half ago anyways, which is why i switched to GAIM and have never looked back

Re:Different wording

[cbiltcliffe]

It's not "spyware" or "adware", it's "Crap", or "Software we don't like". Purely opinion-based,

In Spybot, and a few others, they're called PUPs. Possibly Unwanted Programs.