EVERY KaZaA USER SHOULD READ THIS
 Apr 5th, 2002
(Apr 29th, 2002)
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Its NOT free stuff
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  wampyrii
About me:
Wampyrii doesn't live here any more. Play nice y'all. :)
Member since:15.09.2000
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Review rated by 49 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
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***SPYWARE, ADWARE, HIJACKWARE, FOISTWARE*** ***Your KaZaA experience isn't quite as free as it looks!***
Napster is dead, long live file sharing! But at what price? When Napster came along it introduced us all to a whole new world in which if you wanted to listen to music on your PC then you would simply download and install a tiny piece of software and it was there at your fingertips - better still it was 100% free. Pretty soon these files found their way outside of the PC onto mp3 players and of course we all know the story, the music industry, not too surprisingly got a little miffed at what is little more than mass piracy, and had the site closed down, or at least vastly restructured. Of course, as is the way with the internet, you close one company like this and thousands of others jump in to fill the breach, this time not only was the music undustry under threat but also every other kind of media like movies, software - basically anything which could be saved onto a hard disk could be shared, if you had the time and inclination to download it.
But...there is no such thing as a free lunch despite what so many file shares seem to think. Sure, you download the software for free, the mp3s, movies, games, pictures etc. for free and it looks like you are onto a winner. Somehow though the little question about how these companies are funded seems to pass most users by. Who pays for KaZaA to keep operating? Must be the adverts right? Nope, the downturn in internet advertising has meant that banner ads are less and less appealing, companies look to other mediums to send their advertising message and they find in a virtually unregulated world that they can get away with some of the most horrendous breaches of privacy. Some of these programs track everything from surfing habits, to name, address, email addressbook details and in one case(Audiogalaxy for those users, although its now dumped the software) credit card details and other highly sensitive information! This software is known as spyware. KaZaA is one of the very worst offenders in this sense. KaZaA alone can not fund itself, it has no way of making enough money from its own banners to make a profit, therefore it comes bundled with other software which pays them for the priveledge. These companies pay KaZaA 5-10cents for each time they are installed on a system, a meagre amount but soon adds up when you consider the multi-millions of downloads this software has received. No problem, sites need to make money but its the way they do it which is the problem. KaZaA itself will not function without a program on your system called Cydoor which is an old spyware company which used to behave like a trojan, and was impossible to remove without special instruction. The company looks better now, but its still technically an 'iffy' selection. The bundled software in the past has included the very WORST examples of spyware, adware and hijackware to be found on the net and continues to do so, changing occasionally as contracts change, but never cleaning up their act. This company is completely unscrupulous in what it tries to foist upon its users, it doesn't give a damn about the user's experienceas long as it makes cash. It makes lots of cash, its users are getting shafted.
A wander around the KaZaA website will see a big play made about how
they most certainly do not include any spyware with their program and how their users' privacy is a very big concern of theirs, an issue of great importance. Fine words and all well and good but it comes down to the definition of 'spyware'. In the original sense it stood for programs which were 'sneaked' onto your system and then ran surrepticiously in the background collecting personal data about the user and sending it back to homebase for processing. KaZaA tells you that about its activities, therefore it claims its not spyware...fine, then its adware, which is just as bad, they monitor your activities then target ads at you. They claim not to sell your details on, but the monitoring still goes on and with an ex-spyware company like Cydoor powering this process and well within their rights to change their activities at any second you have to be very trusting indeed of their claims. The things they choose to bundle with their software however DO include spyware, adware, hijackware and all manner of other programs which if you knew about you really wouldn't want on your system at all! KaZaA has a disclaimer against these programs...very convenient, they don't spy, everything else they send onto your system does. Here's a list of the current crop of nasties coming with KaZaA...
~~Cydoor~~ A greatly improved program, which was once very defintely spyware, behaving more like a trojan horse than an ad program. The older versions of Cydoor buried themselves into your Windows registry, would always start up when your system was rebooted, refused to close or uninstall, was buggy and caused frequent crashes. It was installed sneakily onto your system and would download ads onto your hard drive for display whenever it felt like it. If you have a program called CD_LOAD running in the background then you have Cydoor on your system.
The newer versions of cydoor are more like adware than spyware. It still takes up bandwidth and disk space by downloading ads onto your hard disk but at least it makes sure companies tell you its there now and its also possible to uninstall it. This powers the banners in KaZaA and whilst improved there is one big security issue. Firstly do you trust a company which was unscrupulous enough to infect users with an ad program which behaved in much the same way as a virus less than a year ago? Secondly how safe do you feels that they open up a gateway to download executable code silently onto your system?
This program will automatically infect your PC even if you cancel any of the installation programs it comes bundled with. Clicking on install for the KaZaA software immediately infects your computer with Cydoor, whether you complete the install of KaZaA(or any of the other alleged freebie programs it comes with) or not. ~~SaveNow~~
A totally useless product to anyone other than American users, but one which downgrades your system performance, collects personal info. surfing habits etc. and launches pop-up ads when you surf. Supposedly, SaveNow doesn't send back your information and surfing habits to the parent company, but allegedly it does keep a record of all these things which makes you wonder why if its not going to use them. It downloads a crop of pop-ups which are then stored on your hard drive at regular intervals and reports on your surfing habits to homebase once a day...hang on, they said they didn't use your data? Yes, I'm as confused. It also runs in the background automatically from startup whether you are online or not - known to crash frequently and be bug ridden.
What SaveNow does is to monitor your surfing habits, and when you wander into something like a travel site it'll display a pop-up from another travel company which has a special offer going at the moment. Effectively it adds to the number of pop-ups you get which are damn annoying most of the time, so if you want more then be my guest. These pop-ups are all for US companies however and are totally useless to non-US citizens, but you'll still suffer the pop-ups, the spying, the disk space being used up and the use of you bandwidth, slowing down your access time. Last estimates were that 3 million clients had this software installed(US alone), I wonder how many even realise what it is.
~~CommonName~~ A program which allows you to type a simple name to substitute a complex URL or email address thus making things easier. This appears to be nothing but foistware - I can find nothing to say there is anything malicious about this program.
~~b3d~~ A program by Brilliant Digital, distributed by KaZaA and seemingly once considered harmless and pointless it allowed for video playback amongst other things. Installing KaZaA foists this one on you whether you like it or not! Uninstalling KaZaA leaves the Brilliant Digital program files behind - uninstalling the Brilliant Digital software ONLY uninstalls the media player parts - the nasty stuff gets left behind! Most users probably won't notice. Why would you? The thing is, Brilliant Digital has a plan for their software which is almost unbelievable...
Brilliant Digital's masterplan, one unveiled very recently, is to turn every computer with their software installed on it into a node in the Brilliant Digital network. They intend to use your computer's bandwidth, hard disk space and idle processor time to work for them and for their clients. In short, they are going to hijack your system. There are no laws against them doing this, in fact, when you signed up with KaZaA and agreed to their terms and conditions(the ones you probably didn't read because they are a mile long) you agreed to allow Brilliant Digital to do whatever the hell they want to your system. They say they intend to offer this as an opt in service and may have plans to compensate users for their actions but their T&Cs(the ones you agreed to already) mean that they are in no way obligated to do so: "You hereby grant (Brilliant) the right to access and use the unused computing power and storage space on your computer/s and/or Internet access or bandwidth for the aggregation of content and use in distributed computing. The user acknowledges and authorizes this use without the right of compensation."
Thats a direct quote from the T&C of the KaZaA program. If you agree/have agreed to the T&C of KaZaA the you have agreed to allowed this company to sell your bandwidth, CPU cycles and disk space. Now if I, you or any other individual had sneaked a program onto other users systems which could be remotely activated at any time through the internet connection then you'd be calling it a trojan horse, anti-virus software would be going ape and you'd be rushing to remove the stuff. A registered company does it and its ok. It isn't ok, in fact, this company are scuma and by signing up with KaZaA you effectively sign your computer away to them. Full story can be read here:
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2859775,00.html Of course, if you have any sense at all you'll be wanting to uninstall this dispicable company's software.
Good luck. Uninstalling KaZaA leaves it behind. Going to "add/remove programs" and selecting to uninstall B3D only uninstalls the media player despite their telling you its uninstalled everything. In fact, the software to turn you into a node in the BD Network remains, ready to be activated. You have to get rid of this manually. Good eh? most casual users will have NO IDEA what this is, what it does and even if they do want to remove the software they'll leave behind the worse bit!
If you can't see a problem with KaZaA yet then you are a fool. Removal instructions for this can be found here - be careful, you don't wan't the mess things up because you'll be dancing around your Windows System directory...
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-875278.html
~~new.net~~
One of the most prolific plug-ins ever on the net, mainly because they used to give 10c to every company who bundled it with software lading to a successful installation on a system. Consequently many unscrupulous companies would hide the fact that this program was part of the installation procedure and simply install it without question. It doesn't monitor your activities, sell your info. etc. butit is still classed as spyware, now though it doesn't do the 10c thing(so they say, KaZaA must get something out of it!) and companies like KaZaA give you the option first to install or otherwise. Effectively what it does is hijack the domain name battle for non-standard domains suck as .shop or .xxx or suchlike, muddying the waters still further in this area and meaning that there can be more than one website with the same address! With this plugin installed you could try to go to a site called "myshop.shop" and be sent to "myshop.shop.new.net", it'll send you to its own domain. I can't say I fully understand how this works suffice to say that there are a number of reasons why if you wanted to go to somewhere like Amazon.com, you wouldn't want to be redirected to Amazon.com.new.net, at best it would be confusing, at worst it could open up a whole can of worms. Fortunately it doesn't affect .com, .co.uk etc, but nonstandard names with the principal being the same.
If nothing else its a plug-in which you don't need taking up space and resources because it runs the whole time your system is running and is known to conflict with certain programs.
Not a bad list for one program - in fact, by far the most on the net. In the past they have also included the likes off Toptext, which highlights text on a normal webpage and turns it into a link to one of their advertiser's sites as well - wrecking a web designers work by packing it full of weird links to unrelated areas. Many of these were decidedly 'iffy' in themselvs, this program being universally hated across the web, yet acceptable to KaZaA.
On another note, there were three companies who used to use the KaZaA technology for filesharing - KaZaA itself, Grokster and Morpheus. KaZaA and Grokster use spyware and other junk to make money, Morpheus finds that it doesn't need to - says something. As if you needed any more evidence about the unscrupulous nature of this company then a recent attack by KaZaA on Morpheus users should be all you need - THIS is the kind of company you are dealing with: Morpheus and KaZaA were negotiating a new contract so that Morpheus can continue using the KaZaA technology, there is a dispute over costs but negotiations are in progress. KaZaA however has other ideas and suddenly all Morpheus users find themselves kicked off and unable to connect, some get a message to move over to KaZaA through the network! KaZaA without warning booted every Morpheus user off the network, effectively trying to sink Music City's company. The KaZaA website is completely redesigned with a big message inviting Morpheus users to "Come on over to our place" and the software put in place to facillitate that cross-over, downloading KaZaA will invite you to import your Morpheus settings and disable the other program! Effectively KaZaA quite literally ATTACKED Morpheus, then made a big play to poach their customers in the few days it took them to find a new client which it found in the Gnutella network. Morpheus' hastily scrambled new program is of course not very good so they can poach more customers and you'll notice a very aggressive advertising campaign from KaZaA should you wander into and filesharing type site. Go to Morphius.com or Morpheus.com and you'll get KaZaA inviting you to "Come on over" again for example. KaZaA is more than happy to shaft anyone it comes into contact with, even its partners - if I were Grokster I'd be making plans to go elsewhere...if I were a KaZaA user, I'd be very afraid.
Basically I can't recommend highly enough that you dump this program, or if you were ever thinking of installing it to think again very strongly. Hell, its not even as if they are the only file sharing program out there, you have thousands to choose from and not ONE of them as packed full of junk as this one! Most do include foistware(as bundled sofware is called) or adware of some kind, but there are even those which are completely free of this such as Morpheus and WinMX which make their money solely from advertising of the non-privacy invading kind. If they can do it why can't KaZaA? Oh but I know the answer - spyware, adware and all these other unpleasant programs are BIG money makers, thats why. If you want to get rid of KaZaA then you'll need to run its own uninstall program and those of any of its bundled products you have installed. The b3d program will not uninstall with KaZaA, you'll have to do that separately as well. Incidentally spyware, adware etc. isn't just a problem with KaZaA but many other programs use it to, because it is such a money-spinner. Check out a free download from a company called lavasoft which will scan your system and remove any spyware which it finds there quickly are safely. Be aware that it'll find Cydoor and cause KaZaA to stop functioning, as it will with Gator, another foistware packed product and known piece of adware. Follow this link:
www.lavasoftusa.com and if you find and remove spyware you'll probably also note a lot less crashes, slowdowns and disconnections as well. I'd also recommend a good firewall to keep them from coming back, back thats another review...
If in the light of what you've read you still want to use KaZaA then fine, the choice is yours. You'll probably not notice much difference between using it and not using it. You'll crash more often, your connection will suffer slow points for no apparent reason and your surfing will be monitored but if you can deal with this then great. The Brilliant Digital software, if nothing else, seems incredibly dodgy to me, but its up to you. Personally I can't see why in the light of other, better software without these issues you or anyone else would opt to use KaZaA. I certainly wouldn't recommend it, in fact I would implore you to switch to just about ANY other filesharing software! **Final Note - Download.com, the largest resource online for free(and otherwise) downloads has recently booted KaZaA off its listings. The internet's most popuar download site refuses to supply one of the internet's most popular downloads...I think that speaks volumes.
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06.03.2005 00:39
My daughter had lovingly installed it on everyones computer in the house, but not any more, I nearly lynched her and banned her from using it for the very reasons outlined here. Sue
05.03.2005 13:38
i ABSOLOUTLY agree with all of that, kazaa is FULL of horrible ads and alot of spyware and horrid stuff. Thier sig2dat files are horrible and often alot are fake. Stay away from it.
16.01.2005 19:04
I had Kazaa for a bit and I had to get rid of it. It is slow, crashes often, and is so over ridden with adware and spyware that it makes it impossible to use for any length of time. Go WinMX instead.