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Limewire Gets Ads, And Accusations of Spyware
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Nov 12, 2001 11:31 PM
from the who-sends-what-to-whom-and-how dept.
from the who-sends-what-to-whom-and-how dept.
Gerard J. Pinzone writes: "Limewire 1.8 now comes with mandatory banner ads. The reasons given by one of their developers, Christopher Rohrs, for the new ads are that
'Bandwidth alone from www.limewire.com,
www.limewire.org, and router.limewire.com is around $10,000 month! And we need to pay developer's salaries--like mine--to keep driving innovation on the Gnutella network.' On top of all this, the banner ad software Limewire is using is
"Cydoor". Many users are complaining that this is
spyware. Here is a link to the message in the Gnutella forums where this topic is being
discussed"
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Limewire Gets Ads, And Accusations of Spyware
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WAS around 10k, now is... (Score:3, Funny)
Bandwidth alone ... is around $10,000 month!
That's the pre-SlashdotEffect figure, right?/p.
Installation of Cydoor is OPTIONAL! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Installation of Cydoor is OPTIONAL! (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no mention of this program in the Windows Registry, either.
Geez (Score:5, Funny)
http://limewire.limewire.org/servlets/ProjectHo
Re:Geez (Score:5, Informative)
I was about to call you names back. But then I CVSed the source and low-and-behold, if you download it and compile it yourself (very, very easy with Apache Ant - there's even a batch file to do it) it's the same version (1.8) but WITHOUT the ad stuff. You don't even have to muss with the code.
http://core.limewire.org/servlets/ProjectSource
Very nice. (Thanks for being a jerk.)
-Russ
Problems (Score:3, Interesting)
Bearshare has it too (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bearshare has it too (Score:5, Informative)
What pissed me off the most about this is NOWHERE in the install process or the website from front page to download link was this indicated.
I was happy to see alternative to napster, but I was REALLY angry at the fact that people are installing spying crap on my system not EVEN with small notices anywhere in the install or download process! That happened after the REAL.COM spyware fiasco, I thought people learned, I'm sure today it's not doing it anymore for that precise example (after a zillion complain probably)
But WHY do we have to go thru this?? these people should be treated the same way VIRUS WRITERS would be, heck, you can get jailed in some contries just to try to log in a
Anyways, I can't beleive people are still pulling that stunt, mandatory banner adds, it's okay in my book, even if it's totally useless and normally it means that the application will die (because who click these adds anyways?! the only advertising system I saw working were porn sites and some loyal people on a specific site (i.e. Here probably). The fact is they SAY so, they WARN you, if you go thru the process and something slows down your system or tracks your moves, at least you know! that's the BIG difference and even if it's almost ironic to say, I guess with all the spycrap around, people being honnest about the stuff they install on your system should get a praise. (yike!!)
----
| Bearshare pops up to an immediate ad, and also usually spawns a browser window to show an ad. Pretty annoying, but it's not a big deal to just close the spawned window and get on with your business... not really a big deal if limewire does it... besides, if it helps keep them in business, then i say go for it!
MSN sure has great software (Score:5, Funny)
Gnutella? (Score:4, Interesting)
Download it. Give it a try...
So? (Score:3, Flamebait)
(this is a snippit of my LimeWire 1.07 search monitor I fired up just for this post. 5 seconds generated these queries):
xxx
kiddy f*ck
*.mp3
"Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" [vv].avi
nudist
Windows XP Professional.iso
how to hack
*.mp3
porn.jpg
l33t warez
ts.wasco*.avi
12 year old
*.mp3
GOD DAMNIT PEOPLE USE THIS AS A CHAT CLIENT
a.gif
kazaa
and it continues.
Conclusion: There's nothing good ON the Gnutella network. (!= The Gnutella Network is not good.)
Better way to do Ads (Score:4, Informative)
www.httpads.com [httpads.com]
Basically he allows other people to do impulse buying of ads on his website. Very Interesting, and useful
And yes, he is making money on this angle.
An Obsession with Spyware! (Score:3, Interesting)
Either don't install these add-ons (most installers ask these days) or set up your firewall to deny outgoing connections to them (you do have a firewall, right?). Failing that, run a filtering proxy like Proxomitron [flaaten.dk] (Windows only, Linux equivalents exist). If you're not to scared to compile the source yourself, get the latest build [limewire.org] of LimeWire's source and customize it the way you like, as was mentioned in a previous post.
When you send and receive e-mail messages through your ISP, they could easily figure out what times of day you get the most mail, when you send the most mail, your average file attachment size, etc. just by doing a statistical analysis of the mail server's log files; but no one talks about how SendMail could be spyware!
What's wrong with a little data mining? A lot, most would say. Every time you purchase something with your debit card or use coupons at the grocery store, you're telling some large corporation about your habits (this is old news to most). What's the difference if a piece of spyware watches what you do in Internet Explorer? You lose a little privacy? You lose your sanity? You lose your favourite box of rusty nails?
Seems pretty silly to me to worry about things like that when you could just uninstall the software, kill the spyware with Ad-Aware (or your axe of choice) and try a different product. Even better, write your own client and be done with it
Re:An Obsession with Spyware! (Score:5, Insightful)
2) as The Register [theregister.co.uk] recently reminded me outbound filtering is useless against any program that has executed on your computer (because it's easy to piggyback your information on another service that already has outbound permissions) - I'm not sure any spyware does this but...
3) it's fine if someone want to try to track me from somewhere else but my computer in my home is
4) have I mentioned spyware is sneaky? real sneaky - it won't tell you it's installed, it won't (always) register w/ uninstall, it runs all sneaky like and sneaks and stuff.
Poor limewire - they should make money but why can't they do it like NPR, just bug all the limewire users for a week a year for donations?
Re:An Obsession with Spyware! (Score:4, Interesting)
It cost me 2 days to find that it was caused by something called newnet2_*.dll (IIRC), which appeared to do something with alternative TLD's. I was damned lucky to find it at that point because by chance I noticed this funny dll-name in the \winnt directory. It came with either Getright or Gozilla, programs that allowed me to resume a rather large download. More info on newnet at counterexploitation [cexx.org].
I did not know about ad-aware [lavasoftusa.com] at that time. I now run it often, and I use Proxomitron as well. I found proxomitron here [cexx.org], 'official' site is here [cjb.net]. Oh, and don't forget to get new definition files for Ad-Aware regularly!
Spies (Score:3, Funny)
$ w
....
I can see what anybody on a system is doing, in REAL TIME! Imagine what this would mean for marketroids who got ahold of this information!
The only solution is to delete Linux from your systems now. Here's how:
$ DELETE LINUX.EXE
bash: DELETE: command not found
It's even nice enough to tell you that it's not found anymore. Hope this helps everyone rid their systems of spyware!
Sick of entitlement (Score:4, Insightful)
Gnutella and peer networks in general are going to continue evolving and innovating regardless of whether you specifically are involved.
If there is one thing I hate about all these projects it is the lame excuses for significant and broad invasions of privacy by people who cannot build a decent business model.
Instead they take a short cut, sell privacy invasion for a quick fix, and say that it is all for the good of the user.
Just because it makes money does not mean spyware is a proper or even tolerable method of funding work on your project or business, regardless of what it is.
Peer networks are about empowering and utilizing individuals communicating at the edge of the network. Invading their privacy like this defeats the purpose and sells everyone short.
Isnt a bitch giving things away for free? (Score:4, Insightful)
AdAware, ZoneAlarm, Popup Stopper (Score:3, Insightful)
Kazaa did it to me... (Score:4, Informative)
If you're running Windows try this program!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Why not just use Qtella? (Score:3, Informative)
A new version (0.3) was released two days ago.
I have no sympathy for all the losers on
Here is the URL: http://www.qtella.net/
Description:
Qtella is a new Gnutella client for Linux written in C++ using the Qt libraries. It should be no problem to use Qtella on any platforms where Qt with thread support (library qt-mt must exists) is installed.
The following features are part of Qtella 0.2.1:
multiple search
continue interrupted downloads
uploads
limit number of downloads and uploads
limit upload bandwidth
separate unfinished downloads from finished ones
download of several files at once
test whether file allready exists
identification of download server
automatic retry if error, busy, closed
auto connect list
KDE integration
save host list
handle extended gnutella protocol
status lines and statistics
accecpt incoming connections
download from firewalled hosts
pong cache to reduce network traffic
Thiefware (Score:3, Informative)
They have comprehensive descriptions of all the companies and the spyware they install.
I discovered this site after being called by a "representative" wanting to sell our company keywords for $30,000! My boss was psyched about it until I impressed upon him that we did not want to be associated with such scum. The bizarro thing was that this salesman didn't even work for Cydoor Networks...they seemed to be parasites of the parasites.