The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #68300   Message #1148495
Posted By: JohnInKansas
28-Mar-04 - 07:09 PM
Thread Name: BS: TECH: buggary bastards rant
Subject: RE: BS: TECH: buggary bastards rant
It sounds like one of the "download managers" used by many of the "music sharing" sites. Most likely all that will be disabled is the download program itself, but some of them bury themselves pretty deep, so Spybot would be a good choice for a "cleaner." Spybot alone will not generally remove the program - it's only intended to remove the spyware components contained in the program.

Nearly all the "music sharing" download sites that require you to use their own program to download stuff incorporate some pretty invasive "spyware," and programs like Spybot are designed to take the spyware out. (Taking just the spyware out does usually disable the download program - they design it that way so you'll have to re-load the program if you want more downloads, and they get to put the spyware back.) They put the scary warnings on to make you think you "have to" leave it on the machine.

In many cases, using their uninstall will take the "program" out, but will leave their spyware on the machine - so that they can continue to track your surfing (or worse). If you're dealing with one of those sites, using Spybot after you've uninstalled their program by any available method is strongly recommended.

If the program shows in the Program Manager "Add/Remove software" you can probably uninstall it using Program Manager, although there's no guarantee that you'll get everything - since they usually go to some lengths to hide the "junk" components. You'll have to decide whether to try their uninstall, and hope it does a complete removal of the program. After uninstall, use Spybot or one of the other good programs to make sure the tracking junk gets removed.

John