Description What is wrong with them? Last year Real Networks faced a problem when the violation of the privacy of users of the Real Jukebox program was discovered.The program would report back to Real Networks what the users musical preferences were. Their gracious apology and assurances that such a "glitch would not occur again" were accepted in good faith. A week ago however, it did happen again. Real Download is sending data to Real Networks letting them know your download preferences. If giants like Real Networks are willing to hide behind obscure references, of secret data tranfer from your pc's, in the legal notice which the user accepts, it is understandable that smaller companies may fill your pc with spyware. One such spyware utility is Aureate and Steve Gibson, the man who first uncovered it, says: "Aureate deserved - and continues to deserve today - the "Spyware" moniker not (apparently) because it is sending sensitive personal data out of the user's computer, but because it deliberately slips into the user's system secretly, uses the user's Internet backchannel without the user's knowledge or permission, takes pains to remain secretly installed (instructing its hosting software to leave it installed upon the host's removal), masks its presence by deliberately suspending its use of the backchannel in the absence of keyboard or mouse activity and fails to disclose any of this to the typical user who is never fully informed about what's going on." AD Aware is a utility which will spot and clean your pc from Cydoor, Radiate\Aureate, Conducent\TimeSink and CometCursor programms which are carried by over 400 widely distributed applications, including Gozilla. Download the new version 3.03 of AD Aware and the list of all known spyware programs from the links below.
