uTorrent tricking users into changing default browser settings?
forum.utorrent.com
forum.utorrent.com
Deluge - http://deluge-torrent.org/
Tixati - http://www.tixati.com/
qBittorrent - http://www.qbittorrent.org/
(Although I personally prefer qBittorrent: http://www.qbittorrent.org)
Works pretty well on Windows.
You can use a remote connection to connect to uTorrent but it goes through uTorrent's server for authentication if my memory serves me well.
uTorrent... I had to stop using uTorrent because it just stopped working. All torrents failed before they really started. I don't remember the error but I installed Tixati, which is also very functional (but now I have no Windows machine that I want to use for any torrent-related things anymore).
Imagine if everyone were using gshare and the company decided everyone had to use gshare+ and all the data was dependent on their servers/network. Good luck trying to keep an older version or trying an alternative after one company dominated the majority of the market.
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/utorrent_portable http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/qbittorrent_portable
I still use uTorrent Portbale, never had problems with toolbar installers or hijackers yet.
Anecdotally, I had occasion to fire up a torrent client and grabbed uTorrent, what I used some time ago and found to be a good client. I was shocked to see how it had turned into crapware. It felt like sleazy garbage and I actually worried I'd inadvertently installed spyware on my machine.
While it does not have all of the features of more heavy torrent clients, it does have a plugin system - although not many plugins exist yet. It's cross-platform, open source, and pretty light. The author has good priorities and is conscious about issues such as privacy, and having good installers that aren't bundled with questionable content.
Ubuntu/Linux support too which is always nice to see!
There was a case where the application started downloading some strange 5GB file that users did not add: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=728504
Other times it threw open a window from the application to a webpage with shady screensaver installers.
Using a closed-source torrent client in this climate is dangerous.
Recently i lost my htpc so i looked for one client for the tablet.
Of the dozen available, one supported 'only encrypted' mode. One/12
But, there are a lot of other torrent clients listed here, I will be trying some of these out :)
Windows users can turn to Free Download Manager[1]. It's open source (GPL)[2] and just works like uTorrent does. It supports HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent, audio/video preview, partial ZIP downloads, rate limiting, download scheduling, download from multiple mirrors and Chrome/IE/Firefox/Clipboard integration. Plus it "looks native."
I have been using it for years and have never gone wrong - it's extremely fast and because it's FOSS it is obviously ad/spyware/searchware free.
Edit: I am not affiliated with these guys in any way - just a happy user.
[1]: http://freedownloadmanager.org/ [2]: http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/freedownload
- Starts very light, bare bones, downloads torrents and that's all
- Gets bloated with more and more features that nobody wants
- Partners with a shady company
- Dies
Off to alternatives I go.
Edit: I think by partners with shady company you mean the malware company, not BitTorrent, Inc.. Just like Vuze has 3rd-party malware. Coincidentally (?), some Vuze malware reports mention Yahoo! being surreptitiously enabled just like the article.
I couldn't figure out why all of her search and homepage settings had changed, and how they were so resilient that they were re-applied.
I did find SearchProtect, and eventually managed to remove it (uninstalls, + registry hacking, + force deleting files, + nuking the browser installs and re-installing).
But I hadn't figured out where it had come from as my girlfriend didn't believe that she'd installed anything and although I saw uTorrent I thought nothing of that since I didn't believe it installed such `add-ons`.
For those who encounter this, SearchProtect is really nasty. Really hard to remove.
Really nasty stuff -- never using uTorrent again. Was already getting annoyed by latest updates and ads anyway/
To save me (still have to remove SearchProtect) and others here some time... any pointers to website or other reference on how to really remove this thing?
Most Googling finds pages telling you to download this or that scan and remove tools. But I'm wary of doing that.
What I manually did was roughly:
1) Use SysInternals Process Explorer to check for and kill any monitoring process
2) Use SysInternals Autoruns to find and remove all autorun info that I didn't recognise and to identify which executables may be doing it
3) Uninstall component through control panel
4) Restart
5) Change home page settings in browsers (restart, and observed that it only worked until the browser restarted)
6) Removed all browser plugins and extensions on all browsers, where I didn't recognise the extension
7) Repeat #5
8) Viewed source of Firefox browser config and still couldn't find it, but found Chrome had some crappy values referring to this stuff
9) Downloaded Chrome and Firefox, then uninstalled Chrome and Firefox. Deleted all local profile folders from %APP_DATA% and other hidden locations.
10) Manually entered the registry and deleted anything I identified as Search Protect, conduit, Firefox, and Chrome.
11) Manually delete any files identified by anything in the registry or earlier steps
12) Reboot
14) Install Chrome and Firefox
Thankfully my girlfriend doesn't use IE, so aside from purging all extensions and resetting all defaults, I didn't have to concentrate on that.
Interestingly, Chrome proved more susceptible to this than Firefox. Firefox scrubbed clean fairly quickly, but it was Chrome that really seemed determined to change search provider and home page. We chose to nuke her sync'd profile and the local copy entirely, and then install everything from fresh.
This was a huge time-suck, and it's been years since I wandered through the registry... not fun.
PS: And yes, I've told my girlfriend to organise her backups, ensure she's got everything and in a week or two we'll do the full reinstall thing. Sucks that she has to use Windows, but that's academia in the UK for you.
Wipe and re-install, then very carefully restore backups of data.
That is a general rule for malware that you do not know anything about.
However, the SearchProtect install bundled with µTorrent is only malware to the extent that it prevents you from changing your browser defaults. It is not believed to exhibit the other characteristics of malware. It is annoying, scammy, scummy, evil, etc. -- but it does not appear to compromise your system badly enough to require a reformat and clean install.
It's just one step beyond accidentally installing the Ask Toolbar with a new Java install. Yes, it is theoretically possible that it could've taken over your machine. But most likely not.
P.S. Take a look at the Wikipedia page for SearchProtect. Specifically, History and Talk. There's one high-up editor who's been stonewalling any attempt to add a Criticism section, on the basis that Wikipedia cannot link to user posts.
It's super robust. I have a server that's currently seeding 200+ torrents (all Linux distros and other freely available material) at a constant 80mbps+ and it is still very snappy, even on the very under powered machine that it's running on.
From what I understand, there hasn't been a client that's truly taken its place.
There's really not much different with torrents in the last few years.
Magnet link support is the only thin I can think of.
For myself and my brother, Transmission has handily replaced uTorrent. Simple, downloads torrents, lets me make new ones to send files between friends, and that's it. Perfect!
Awesome and interesting guy.
The day uTorrent pushed the update that tried to install a browser extension I was absolutely done with them. I do not support malware in any shape or form.
Someone should start a site that allows users to vote on a software company's trust factor. :)
The reason it is still around is because it is so damn effective.
If a thief breaks into your home and steals your TV, you're pissed that your TV was stolen but that's what you expect of thieves. If your best friend does it, it adds that extra layer of betrayal and it adds the feeling of shame and stupidity for ever having trusted them.
As for uTorrent, it's been going down this path for a while, gradually introducing crap into the app. And this one is the last for me, as well.
Btw, apparently, they turned off registration on the forum to ward off the mounting complains. When I go to https://forum.utorrent.com/register.php, I'm greeted with Get lost spammer, we don't need your kind here. And of course the topic is closed. Well done.
[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mis_laboratory/archive/2012/08/30/mo...
http://www.filehippo.com/download_utorrent/9859/
runs fast, no ads, no issues, just works!
1.6.1 is light weight, unmolested, and still worth using.
My point is, torrent usage is synonymous to piracy, infringement and other illegal activities. So, perhaps it is this tendency that makes people at uTorrent think that it is not totally wrong to rip off people who are ripping off content & software makers. In my experience, I never fully trusted uTorrent. It is simply difficult to trust something that allows advertisement of malware, porn, fraudulent sites. It started off quite well, but then it has been on my watch list since quite some time now.
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/ (choose the JRE download)
uTorrent is gone in our case, I've moved her over to using Qget with our Qnap NAS and while it's not as feature rich as uTorrent it's a much better option. And it's one I can watch and control a little better as well!
This is fuckyou-ware. Software that serves a reasonable purpose, but does it with utter contempt for the user.
With this particular case, this piece of software keeps resetting the user's start page to Yahoo even after the user actively reconfigure it.
Now it's just another parasite on the internet.
I was looking for a simple replacement for uTorrent for a while now. I have been using linux for years now and was surprised how awful it became while I was off windows.
I stopped using it about 2 yrs ago for similar reasons. It's a malware seeding garbage now.
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2011/12/20/mozilla-and-google-...
I've also used Deluge, but there's nothing too special about it in my eyes.
It was a beautiful bit of software.
Kazaa lite had a lot of other tweaks and hacks to the exe, which I assumed used some sort of decompiler to essentially "crack" it and modify it in certain ways. Then, along with registry patches and changes to other libraries it used made some fundamental changes to how it worked and connected to the network.
Someone wouldn't need to do this for uTorrent if they just wanted vanilla uTorrent and nothing else, but the possibilities exist.
Here is version 2.2.1 http://www.filehippo.com/download_utorrent/9859/
Let's be clear here: the user was still given a choice, but the user "trusted" uTorrent to not force them to make one. Give me a break.
But as someone who's installed Java numerous times and never ended up with the Ask Toolbar I don't have much sympathy for people who can't pay attention to what's presented on the screen.
edit: "Do you want to install chrome? yes/no", no -> "you'll now install toolbar with utorrent. Next >", no yes/no
else:
"Do you want to install chrome? yes/no", yes -> utorrent + chrome
What you're offered is based on a number of things like IP location and computer versions
"No, I didn't. I threw up a button that you'd never click on purpose hoping you'd accidentally click it and give me 'permission' to install crap you didn't want on your computer."
"Oh, good. For a minute there I thought you were some kind of scumbag."
(ethics of bundling undesired programs in installers notwithstanding, users are asserting that the thing didn't just change their defaults but also kept resetting their defaults even after the user changed it back. Not cool even if the user installed it entirely on purpose)