Very Important News For Audiogalaxy Users

i've never used audiogalaxy but wow that's really interesting.

Heh. It mentions Ad-Aware, but I have actually BOUGHT it meaning I get AD-WATCH with it. It automatically removes Spyware as it encounters them in real time.

i'm pretty sure this was exposed quite some time ago. they claimed it was just to monitor things like activity and amount of IP traffic, and nothing more. then it's easy to get rid of it too, if you care.

no, this sounds worse than that - sending back data from forms etc, and according to the article was bundled with AG secretly until about a month ago. WebAccelerator, Gator, Bonzi Buddy etc are the obvious pieces of spyware, but this was much more sneaky.

yeah, yr right. this IS bad. Here's some advanced "dope" on removing it.

Note that Mopheus also appears to contain spyware. If you use Morpheus you may find a file called kazaadownload[followed by long number].dat. I believe this purports to enable partial downloads to be continued when you next access Morpheus but some people have claimed to have located credit card details etc in these files. The file is difficult to delete and I had to download an uninstaller to get rid of it. Ad-aware does not appear to detect it.

Is anyone aware of any "clean" alternatives to AG and Morpheus?

I put my trust in you. I think I will see what I can do about getting all this stuff off my PC.

Does anyone know whether this occurs with Macs? It didn't appear so from the article.

The spyware issue discussed in the article doesn't apply to the Mac Audiogalaxy client, because it isn't distributed by Audiogalaxy but by an independent shareware maker (I'm assuming you're using MacSatellite, and that the author of the shareware hasn't included his own form of spyware). So download in confidence, kind of...

Thanks, Phillippe. As a matter of fact, I have been using Virtual PC on my Mac to run the PC Audiogalaxy client, because it's more reliable than MacSatellite and allows up to 10 simultaneous downloads. But I use Mac Internet Explorer for cueing up songs, and all other necessities of life.

it also broadcasts your house co ordinates to the alien mothership for potential future abduction.

and ever see The Man On The Grassy Knoll and the inventor of Audiogalaxy in the same room?? ahhhhhhh.

*knowing wink*

Hey Curt,

I asked the IT people here and they told me that Virtual PC runs in a completely seperate environment from your Mac OS. So if you're web- surfing through Virtual PC, Audiogalaxy will probably capture your information. If you go through Internet Explorer on your Mac however, none of your personal information will be transmitted.

I asked lavasoft about their position re Morpheus and got the following response, which may be of interest:

Hi

We target spyware components. I do not know if Morpheous has spyware because I have never had the need for this type of application. If Morpheous has spyware that we do not know about then we will do tests on that. There is a thread at our forum that discussed this and I have yet to see any concrete evidence against them. However, there is the controversy in which you mentioned that has been seen by myself in several different locations on the web.

A spy free app called WinMX can be found at www.winmx.com But with any p2p program, the use of it opens your computer up to everything. With Best Wishes Coyote - Tom Wilson coyote@lavasoft.de www.lavasoft.de http://www.lavasoft.de/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi http://TomCoyote.com

(My Message)

I note there is some controversy as to whether Morpheus contains spyware. The Kazaadownload[longnumber].dat file that is downloaded by Morpheus is causing some suspicion (I've seen one claim that it contained a users credit card number) but Ad-aware does not flag it up. Is that because you believe this is not spyware?

I'd be most grateful for a response - Morpheus is a valuable tool and similar file-sharing systems seem to be full of spyware. I'm wondering whether I should be deleting Morpheus from my PC.

Anyone using Kazaa or limewire might want to start looking for a creepy little trojan disguised as an online lottery.
Symptom #1: Any shortcut (Start Menu or Internet) named "clicktiluwin" is part of the Trojan.
Symptom #2: A subdirectory under \Windows called "\Explorer" with a false "Explorer.Exe" in it (The real Explorer.exe is in the main Windows directory...not in its own subdirectory.) Hmmmm. Why would it need its own "version" of Explorer.
All these 'sploits n' viruses and trojans...Makes me glad I'm migrating to Linux.

'Sputnix', the audiogalaxy client for Mac OS X, doesn't have any spyware (probably because it's not made by Audiogalaxy)