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uTorrent tricking users into changing default browser settings?
- unabridged 13y agothis is why "freeware" can't be trusted, the threat of a fork keeps open source developers honest
- sydbarrett 13y agoI never updated uTorrent, I run 2.2.1 so either find it or I can probably send you the exe.
- endgame 13y agoFor other readers: The consensus on the reddit thread was that 2.2.1 was the last good version.
- sydbarrett 13y agoDidn't know it was consensus but 2.2.1 will max out your DL and UL without the BS malware. I have been using bittorrent since before uTorrent so there's a reason I stuck with 2.2.1.
- Wingman4l7 13y agoIIRC some people even run the older 1.8.x versions, for reasons which escape me at the moment.
- pogue 13y agoI'm surprised someone is trying to distribute a "uTorrent Light" with all the adware and bloat stripped out.
- sydbarrett 13y agoAny torrent veteran knows it's [uTorrent 2.2.1] better than whatever most of the top commenters propose. Folks, you don't always have to upgrade, especially when the upgrade is simply a revenue stream for THEM.
- Wingman4l7 13y agoIt's closed source -- how would you do that? Most people settle for using one of the older versions.
- pogue 13y agoWell, you may not remember Kazaa Lite. But, basically, all you would need to do is unpack the installer with a tool that creates installer programs. You would basically need to decompress it, strip out all the adware or anything else you didn't want, create a new installer and you're done! 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.
- lingben 13y agosame here, the trick is to not upgrade and turn auto-update check off Here is version 2.2.1 http://www.filehippo.com/download_utorrent/9859/ http://www.filehippo.com/download_utorrent/9859/
- Wingman4l7 13y agoYup, this is where I got it -- it's the last build before v3, which had a bunch of really questionable changes.
- gesman 13y agouTorrent started selling itself short quite a while ago. I stopped using it about 2 yrs ago for similar reasons. It's a malware seeding garbage now.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- gilgoomesh 13y agoSimple: don't use uTorrent. Use Transmission instead: http://www.transmissionbt.com http://www.transmissionbt.com
- ihuman 13y agoThe only reason I still use uTorrent is for the integrated RSS parser. Is there something like that for Transmission?
- autodidakto 13y agoThe transmission guys are against rss for some reason. Tixati and qBittorent have it.
- brunoqc 13y agoMaybe http://flexget.com/ http://flexget.com/
- joelhooks 13y agoI use Flexget and Transmission. Wondeful combo. Keeps Plex well fed :>
- stcredzero 13y agoI use Automatic for RSS and just have it deposit torrents to Transmission's watch directory.
- CrazedGeek 13y agoOn Windows, you're going to want Transmission-Qt Win: http://sourceforge.net/projects/trqtw/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/trqtw/ (Although I personally prefer qBittorrent: http://www.qbittorrent.org http://www.qbittorrent.org)
- dghughes 13y agoI've read sourceforge is pretty sketchy these days too bundling "helper" applications to any downloads.
- vezzy-fnord 13y agouTorrent is a horrendous bloat, anyway. Personally I used rTorrent for a while (minimal ncurses interface, very appealing to me) but later switched to Transmission. I've also used Deluge, but there's nothing too special about it in my eyes.
- airencracken 13y agoI'm a big fan of rtorrent, I just wish that it was a proper server/client. Not a fan of daemonizing things by running them in screen.
- neoyagami 13y agoSince i stopped using windowz in mac i use the official bittorrent app
- gantengx 13y agoI have a feeling they will sneak the malware in the official bittorrent app too
- product50 13y agoSurprising that no-one is talking about Yahoo and their tactics to get more users. I am sure SearchProtect and Yahoo! here have a deal to push as many default searches as possible to drive revenue.
- medell 13y agoThese kind of shady deals can't be good in the long run. If you work at a company that suggests this, make sure to voice your opinion. Someone should start a site that allows users to vote on a software company's trust factor. :)
- dsl 13y agoYahoo has been doing these "Search Distribution Deals" for many years, as long as I can remember in fact. Bing was at one point paying $20+ per toolbar install when they were trying to gain market share. Google has done paid toolbar distribution as well. The reason it is still around is because it is so damn effective.
- russelluresti 13y agoThe comment thread attacks Yahoo! for it's dirty tactics, but the difference is that we kind of expect this crap from Yahoo!. People are miffed at uTorrent because it was an application they trusted. It's more of a betrayal. 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.
- ParadisoShlee 13y agoEven Sun installs some kind of ad toolbar in Java!
- damian2000 13y agoyeah the Ask Toolbar is crap but at least that's opt-in... this is search hijacking.
- chilldream 13y agoIt's opt-out, unless they changed it recently. I've lost count of how many times I've had to uncheck that checkbox.
- kderbe 13y agoOT, but: you get a toolbar-less installer if you go through oracle.com instead of java.com. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/ http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/ (choose the JRE download)
- mmagin 13y agoThat's Oracle now. Sun weren't such dicks.
- laureny 13y agoFirst Vuze, then uTorrent. It looks like the life cycle of any popular torrent application is: - 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.
- gkop 13y agoAzureus/Vuze was never lightweight, and does not appear to have died. And uTorrent didn't begin to bloat out until after it was acquired by BitTorrent, Inc.. 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.
- pessimizer 13y agoAgreed. Azureus was consistently the most bloated, slowest torrent client available. Vuze was an expansion of that.
- V-2 13y agoWhat's wrong with Vuze? I'm using it (occasionally) and it's never done anything suspicious that I'd notice
- stcredzero 13y agoMaybe they should sell "track day" versions of their apps as an in-app purchase?
- rschmitty 13y agoJust like AV programs for windows! I'm at the point where I would pay software developers to just stop touching things (cept for bugs)
- esw 13y agoIt's not just torrent applications - this is the lifecycle for a lot of free apps. Eventually you've got to pay the bills, and if no one is willing to pay for your app then it's either time to insert ads or crapware or both.
- pavel_lishin 13y agoDamn; and I blamed Firefox for this.
- Slackwise 13y agoWhy would Firefox do this if they get referral money from using Google as their default search? https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2011/12/20/mozilla-and-google-sign-new-agreement-for-default-search-in-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2011/12/20/mozilla-and-google-...
- pavel_lishin 13y agoFirefox was the last thing I remembered installing before this happened; I'd forgotten about uTorrent.
- cmsimike 13y agoWasn't uTorrent The Best Thing Ever when it first hit the scene? I seem to recall it was this application. It was about a 93k executable that didn't need to be installed. Just download and run. It was my go to torrent client of choice during my Windows days. Sad to see it become this.
- gantengx 13y ago:(
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- orbitur 13y agoAs annoyed as I am by the reactions here (uTorrent didn't maliciously install adware behind anyone's back), I moved to Mac in 2009 and stayed there until I decided to build an HTPC for my living room. First thing I did was install uTorrent, and I was confronted with so much bloat. There are ads INSIDE the torrent list, and there are options to stream video/music. Completely unexpected. From what I understand, there hasn't been a client that's truly taken its place.
- jrs99 13y agoyou should google utorrent toolbar mystery. many people have chosen not to install the toolbar and ended up with a toolbar.
- hayksaakian 13y agoLike others have noted, if you were happy with uTorrent in 2009, just use an older version. There's really not much different with torrents in the last few years. Magnet link support is the only thin I can think of.
- plaguuuuuu 13y agoWhat about security vulns
- mercurialshark 13y agoSo glad someone posted on this bullshit. Not only has uTorrent started doing this, but BBEdit 10 and some other previously not super shady software has too.
- bsg75 13y agoWhat is BBEdit doing?
- pbreit 13y agoI just tried installing and after declining the offer the installer hung. Buh bye.
- lingben 13y agoSimple solution: go back to using the old, barebones, simple, fast utorrent v 2.2.1 http://www.filehippo.com/download_utorrent/9859/ http://www.filehippo.com/download_utorrent/9859/ runs fast, no ads, no issues, just works!
- sydbarrett 13y agoHey thanks for piggybacking onto my response, classy.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- lnanek2 13y agoYou are marked as dead in some posts above, so only people with the right options set in their settings can see your posts. If it happened recently, it was probably for that ethnic slur starting with k I see above.
- aaronem 13y agoSomeone must've posted an HN link on 4chan.
- bobbles 13y agoRemember to keep watching during install though, this will still try and install browser add-ins and get you to download a movie.
- orbitur 13y agoWow. People are actually angry in that thread because they didn't look closely at the setup steps. 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.
- guelo 13y agoTo be fair, utorrent used to be trustworthy before being b ought by the despicable Bittorrent Inc.
- pessimizer 13y agoWhat's despicable about Bittorrent, Inc.? They seem like a very pleasant company to me. I won't be using any of their products because I generally don't use closed source stuff, but I'm grateful for their protocol.
- rhizome 13y agoAh yes, the time-tested virtue of taking advantage of the naive.
- taspeotis 13y agoI do disagree with the strategy of bundling typically unwanted software in with installers. 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.
- dylz 13y agoIt installs whether you pick yes or no. 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
- cefarix 13y agoI got bitten by this yesterday when I updated. I didn't expect it at all and only realized I had installed something a fraction of a second after I clicked what looked like a Next button... Went to Control Panel and uninstalled as soon as I noticed an icon in the taskbar notification area.
- xanderstrike 13y agoSwitch to Deluge[1]! It's Free Software, and is so similar to uTorrent you won't notice the difference. 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. [1] http://deluge-torrent.org/ http://deluge-torrent.org/
- jaxbot 13y agoNot new, though. uTorrent install has been shipping with crap for a while now.
- sheepz 13y agoThis is why I love Linux. Every generic piece of software comes with no BS attached. For example, on Windows, if you want to mount an ISO you have to download some shady piece of software, the installer of which comes bundled with n toolbars. In Linux it's a matter of a simple one-line command...
- starik36 13y agoIn Windows 8, the ability to mount ISOs is native.
- cosmie 13y agoWhile that was super annoying for years, Windows 8+ natively supports ISO mounting[1]. [1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mis_laboratory/archive/2012/08/30/mounting-iso-files-directly-is-awesome-feature-in-windows-8-for-dreamspark-and-msdn-subscribers.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mis_laboratory/archive/2012/08/30/mo...
- vacri 13y agoAh, the heady days when merely having an ISO mounter on windows caused cheat-detection software to ban you.
- eball 13y agoAdware goes to where there are a lot of non tech savvy users. If desktop Linux gets more traction, you'll see such search hijacking on there too. Note that this story is about search hijacking on OS X, not Windows.
- smegel 13y agouTorrent went bad ages ago...ive been using an old, solid version (around 2.7?) for years, no reason to change. It was a beautiful bit of software.
- znowi 13y agoWow, this is an unusual step for Yahoo. Who would think that a hijack process that tempers with user's browser settings is a good idea? Hello, Marissa Mayer? 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 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.
- sydbarrett 13y agoI hate nigger scum that consider themselves pirates and actualy just suck dick
- alan_cx 13y agoIf memory serves, uTorrent lost trust-ability when it got sold. IIRC, that means post version 1.6.1 it became a concern and began to needlessly bloat. Prior to that is was a brilliant bit of software. 1.6.1 is light weight, unmolested, and still worth using.
- pessimizer 13y agoReleased in Feb 2007, and the last version worth using.
- x0054 13y agoThis is exactly why I have such a love/hate relationship with BitTorrent Sync. I use it a lot, and it works so great, but I so wish it were open source.
- wnevets 13y agoI havent upgrade utorrent is years because of how bad BitTorrent Inc. made it.
- yitchelle 13y agoJust an off topic question as it was a while ago since I left the world of torrenting. Back in the day, it was mainly music and movies that most folks were trying to get. What else are being torrented these days?
- DanBC 13y agoTV shows, games, apps, OSs, books, audiobooks, porn.
- DDR0 13y agoOh, man, this one ultimately was the last straw that broke my old XP box's back. I accidentally clicked through the set-up, and I didn't really have the sysadmin chops to fix it at that point. Whatever hitched a ride on search protect slowed that machine to a crawl. I ultimately ended up installing linux on it, but it's just not the same anymore.
- olov 13y agoUse qBittorrent instead if you like the feature-set of uTorrent. In particular, qBittorrent's UI is modeled after uTorrent. It is open source and works on Linux, OS X, Windows, FreeBSD and OS/2(!), supports sequential downloading (aka download in order or streaming) and has an optional web UI. http://www.qbittorrent.org/ http://www.qbittorrent.org/
- Fuxy 13y agoActually qBittorrent seems to be a good alternative. Let's see how good it is compared to uTorrent. 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.
- buro9 13y agoAh, this explains what happened to my girlfriend who was using bittorrent to download bundles of academic papers. 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.
- Macuyiko 13y agoCurrently have the same problem on one of my machines. Luckily, I knew already about the culprit. 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?
- buro9 13y agoI'm afraid I can't help a great deal as it was a one-off brute force effort. 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.
- gdy 13y agoI have latest uTorrent 3.3 (build 29625) [32-bit] on my Windows box and there is Yahoo in Firefox.
- gdy 13y agoI meant "and there is NO Yahoo"
- PeterisP 13y agoDon't use 'official' installers manually ever, for this same reason that they try to cheat you into 'agreeing' to something - use something like http://ninite.com/ http://ninite.com/ that run the installers with the correct no-to-optional-malware options.
- Akujin 13y agoUse old versions of uTorrent. Before it was bought out by BitTorrent, Inc. Now it's just another parasite on the internet.
- parski 13y agoI switched to rTorrent with ruTorrent a few years ago. I haven't used uTorrent since. It's perfect if you have an old machine laying around somewhere. Just whip out your favourite flavor of Linux and you're golden.
- gnidan 13y agoIs there any response from uTorrent about this? Didn't see any posts by any admins or moderators in that thread; I was wondering if they said anything besides just closing the topic?
- oddshocks 13y agoSounds like you need you some Deluge. http://deluge-torrent.org/ http://deluge-torrent.org/
- mmvvaa 13y agoI would love to hear from Yahoo (hopefully from Marissa Mayer, or whoever authorised it at Yahoo), and from uTorrent. I was personally chearing for Yahoo's new breath of hope, under Mayer's leadership. This is a pretty crappy move. An apology would be enough.
- mmvvaa 13y agoThe only positive aspect of this, and make no mistake - this does not excuse their fishy behaviour - is that Yahoo has lead the way in defending its user's privacy against the NSA.
- eYsYs 13y agoThis reminds me of an argument given by my friend proposing that a person has a higher tendency to do bad to the people who we know are bad. Even your good-guy-Greg has an inclination (of sorts) to bring down/harass/make money off your scumbag-Steve, even when Steve's actions were inconsequential to Greg; which I thought was an apt observation from someone who thinks a lot in absolutes. Maybe its the 'easy to get away with factor' or maybe its the karma kicking in. 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.
- paulrademacher 13y agoThis isn't malware. Malware is defined as software meant to disrupt or compromise your machine. This is fuckyou-ware. Software that serves a reasonable purpose, but does it with utter contempt for the user.
- unsignedint 13y agoSoftware that is persistently forcing certain setting against the user's intention does sounds like malware, though. With this particular case, this piece of software keeps resetting the user's start page to Yahoo even after the user actively reconfigure it.
- orillian 13y agoFor people having issues finding the files that need to be removed, look for anything related to Conduit; and remove that. SearchProtect and a few of the other names are not what the software is called in all cases it seems. I had to remove this from my wifes machine yesterday, and everything was related to a Conduit installer. No mention of SearchProtect. 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!
- tn13 13y agoReport search protect to All anti-viruses, report to Yahoo!, report to their domain name provider and hosting providers.