Maxthon browser is a spyware

English report: https://exatel.pl/advisory/maxthonreporten.pdf

TL;DR: It doesn't matter if you agree to join "User Experience Improvement Program" in Maxthon or not - the browser regularly sends this data to Beijing servers:

  - Windows service pack version,
  - screen resolution,
  - Maxthon version,
  - CPU freq,
  - Maxthon path,
  - adblock info,
  - startup site address,

and the most important:

  - ADDRESS OF EVERY VISITED SITE - full history, with every query entered in google,
  - every ~5 reports - FULL LIST OF INSTALLED SOFTWARE (with exact versions).

Holy crap. That is just a ton of information being sent up there. (Also, as solely an English speaker, I'm very impressed with Google Translate's ability to parse this article out into a readable form.)

I mean to their credit, the NSA is not in Beijing. I dunno though, this seems a lot worse. What a mess. This is part of the reason I won't buy Lenovo computers anymore. The Maxthon browser is installed by default, along with all sorts of other junkware and god knows what any of it actually does.

Does anyone know if this has been independently confirmed by anyone else? If it gets confirmed, we'll be pulling it from PortableApps.com as well. Discussion/tracker: http://portableapps.com/node/54786

Although I'm a pole, I'd appreciate if this link was posted with translation.