This is interesting. I'd be pissed as hell if I was using this and found out that someone decided to install their software on my machine without my consent....

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-873181.html

is that for real? I noticed it was posted on april fools day.

No, it IS for real... I thought the same thing. Oh well.

Isn't there a way to get rid of the spyware, or disable it somehow? I thought i heard you could do it on Kazaa, or theres a program that does it or something?

Well, since you asked...
http://www.refosearch.tk/

Very interesting little link you've got there. HMMMMMM.

For those of you interested, here's what I found:

I came home and immediately uninstalled Kazaa. It of course left behind all kinds of files. While scanning the registry, I came across numerous entries for Brilliant Digital Entertainment. They all point to a directory under Windows. In my case, it was C:\WINNT\BDE. Inside were numerous things, including a bdeviewer and bdeclean. bdeviewer looks to be some kind of media player. bdeclean seems to remove everything from the computer, directory wise (thank god). But, the registry still needs to be cleaned of any references to Brilliant Digital Entertainment.

Ahh, what fun.

A little more info:

Things appear in the registry under B3D, S3D and BDE. Also, files get put in the C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32 directory as well.

That's what I get for installing crappy P2P software. I used it once and it crashed my computer. I'm going back to WinMX.

There is a very good free program that gets rid of spyware of all kinds, though I doubt they have added Kazaa's brand of spyware yet. I'm sure they will. It is called AdAware.

http://www.lsfileserv.com/

Great program. I highly recommend it. But, no, they haven't added the Kazaa spyware yet, although they have other Kazaa spyware in there already.

Cool, ran that program and my system actually starts up faster, ha.

Yeah, it's amazing how well your system will do after removing adware and spyware.

The Cydoor DLL used to actually lock my system up regularly until I removed it...

Very good indeed. Another that didn't quite make adware, or made it but it can't get rid of it is vx2.dll

For those who had spyware version of Audiogalaxy installed as well, you should get rid of %windows%\vx2.dll as well. After following a few links around, found the details on deregistering it, to delete after restart here -

http://home.hetnet.nl/~denheikant/vx2dll.html

Wow. It found 76 entries that I have gotten rid of including cydoor. Very nice program.

try www.kazaalite.tk

What is the best way to make sure that Ad-Aware is upto date....?

They have an updateable signature file that they use (kinda like many virus programs do). You can get the signature file directly from one of their mirrors, or you can download the RefUpdate program, which will check for the latest one and get it automatically, though I haven't tried that way personally.

I use refupdate 1.3 all the time. Works perfectly.

- Jon

This is why I don't install crap like that. I've never installed napster, never installed Kaaza, lime whatever, morpheus, etc. Never used any of that stuff and I'm glad for it.

Calvin

Yeah, I wasn't hit by it either because I didn't have it installed, but I thought I'd pass the word.

I don't install that kind of software either (well, Napster back in the day, but that didn't have any spyware), but I still get these programs on my computer now and then. It's not just file-sharing programs that do, a LOT of supposedly "free" computer programs will add these damn things on. I'm surprised there hasn't been a lawsuit yet.

A lot of it is from web surfing too. Even with my personal firewall, I get some from time to time. I use NetZero sometimes too...

Just informing that C|Net has a step by step removal guide for this junk. Link

Well they just told a nice big fat lie:

" Executives from Brilliant Digital and Kazaa's parent company say people can uninstall the Brilliant Digital or Altnet software from their computers without interfering with the Kazaa program itself. This is true, but it's not an easy process."

I searched through everything last night finding all these files and deleted them. I pretty much did the same thing they are telling people to do, yet when I ran Kazaa afterwards, it says

"Kazaa can not be run because a necessary part has been uninstalled"

oh well i didnt use it much anyway, I just thought I would point that out