I think spyware clients are a shame for gnutella community, but please judge on your own and vote!
Woken up through the current "spyware hype" in the Limewire forum, I recently scanned again some of my PCs - and surprisingly found some Spyware EXE/DLLs. Oops, I thought I have been very carefull.

I have to say: Shame on Bearshare and LimeWire that you take part on this dirty business!

To be fair, dont forget that Vinnie Falco's Bearshare was bundled with Sypware since months, but also other filesharing apps such as Audiogalxy, eDonkey, Kazza and more come with 3rd party software today. All together fool newbies which don't know what "Addins" in reality are: Paid spyware parasites. Very ironical when sofwtare developer answer "we didn't know" or "our Addins are no spyware". Just read some details about Gator and eZula which are very "IN": more about sypware and the trouble [2] [3].
Money making isn't everything, if some can't find a serious business concept, then at least don't complain about a bad reputation. Saying this, I hope that portals as Zeropaid will show which client is bundeld with spyware!

The next days I will advice all my friends and customers which use MS Windows to use AdAware and avoid Spyware software wherever possible. Spyware brings expensive firewall concepts "ad absurdum", could steal confidential information or alter shown websites without notice, best idea:

Do avoid infected filesharing clients, choose another one! One advantage of Gnutella is that there are many good clients.

Some open words, Moak

I loathe spyware and won't let it near any of my computers. One of the Gnutella programs (not mentioned here to avoid flamewars) nuked my TCP/IP stack <newdotnet is NOT fun>, and I had to reinstall the OS to get on the Net again. I was not happy about that.

I won't touch spyware, no way.

My main problem with it is the spyware usually runs even when not using the program that installed it (and often hangs around even if you uninstall the original).

The people who write the spyware itself (I'm not talking about the programs that bundle it necessarily) care nothing about the users except how they can further exploit them. Most of these programs are very poorly written, eat up your system resources, and cause crashes and instability galore. I imagine many are also extremely insecure and full of holes that could make you vulnerable to any half-assed 133t h4x0r.

To me they're as bad as a virus or Trojan and should be just as illegal. Nothing should ever be placed on a system without full user consent. These programs absolutely rely on users being unaware of how they work and what they truly do.

Software developers that use them are making a deal with the devil - one that will always cost in the long run. It's basically like a giant neon sign to all future investors saying: "We have no legitimate business plan or source of income".

Even if I know that many spywares auto load during simple navigation with cookies ect., (and for this i regulary sweep my drives) I am not willing to keep symbionthic programs...

Hi Carlo!

You can ask me everytime which progs are infected and which not...

in many cases ad-aware is a very good friend!

Morgwen

Yes, I use that for sweeping.

Hi Kath!

The best is every time after diconnecting from internet!

Morgwen

I won't applaud BearShare for bundling spyware, but at least users are given an option to decline its installation without disabling the application or being invaded by hidden files or programs.
Personally, I avoid any and all 'free' programs bundled with ads or spyware. I'm more than willing to purchase clean versions of the application.

The worst symptom of all, I suppose.

Ivan
"In the dark we make a brighter light"

Hi again!
When you install programs that come with spyware... and uninstall it afterwards, don't believe the spyware is gone. No, the spyware will usually be still on your computer, and stay for ever. The uninstaller will NOT remove it! Great features, yeah. *cough*

Take a fresh copy of AdAware today and clean your system.
This Gnutella spyware story is becoming more ironic, the more knowledge I get of it. If you're interested continue reading:

The Gnutella spyware story.... a modern tale.
(Approved for all audiences)

In a network not far away from here some vendors needed money in lack of a busines model. They had no idea how to make money with file sharing, so they thought, hey let's bundle spyware tools to my installer and name them "Addins". That sounds cool, the newbies will love it and I get some good bucks from the Spyware industry. Said and done. Everyone should be happy... they thought.
Whenever someone asks questions, they lie about the existens of spyware or name it harmless "commercials ads". When someone continues asking "but we found Spyware", they tell us "you are spreading rumours" or "creating new FBI X-cases" to make us silent. The vendor continues hardly denying the existence of any spyware. After a while more people confirming spyware does exist. Some news sites and two webmasters of anti-spyware sites underlined the existance, the danger and the damage caused by spyware. Suddenly silence. More serious spyware is found and we still hear the vendor, let's call him Chris, singing a silent "no it's no spyware" or a little bit later "we didn't know, we are nice guys and everything is optional". Funny, because that's the next lie. Or as some people would say, a very creative way of telling the truth. What happened? One spyware tool was silently always installed, without asking for permission or telling the user. Some people stopped to trust Chris now, some still believe him.
At this time another vendor, let's call him Vinnie, is congratulating the first one. Vinnie is telling us that Addins are a good solution, a final solution! And both tell each other how great they are. Hmm, he slighlty forgot to mention that "Addins" are Spyware. Now you wonder? Yes that would be the normal reaction for sure. But what you didn't know, that this other vendor has a long and well know history of spyware. Vinnie bundled spyware to his product long before Chris did and caused a lot of annoyance, perhaps even more than Chris did. A quick flashback: the same story, denying spyware, fooled users and many corrupted computers because of a bad installer (which resulted in a complete Windows reinstall for many users, urks). Finally Vinnie made the spyware full optional at install time. Okay the spyware is still there and will infect hundreds of newbie users which still don't know that Addins are spyware parasites... but at least this vendor has learned something. Probably he lost hundreds of users and gained a bad reputation too.

Back to the first vendor of our story. Chris is still not sure if he wants to learn from the past... and continues to ship his new version with Spyware. Chris is not on the dark side of Gnutella, if you ask now. No, no! He does a lot of interesting research for the Gnutella community, he is a friendly guy helping other developers and makes his whole work open source. Wow, nice guy we would normally say. The only problem is, in Spyware he sees a way of paying his bills and we know bills must be paid. "How sad", some people say and stop using his Gnutella client.
On Chris's homepage he still denies that spyware is spyware. He wants to make people believe that "Addins" are no risk, he probably also believes in it. So he writes on his homepage in the security section: "We do not consider this bundled software to be spyware because it does not report any personal information. Users are not required to install this software but it helps defer costs". Do you wonder again? Sure a lot of people do, after what we undigged up to now. More people believed that Chris and Vinnie have a very creative handling of the truth.
Meanwhile some interested users investigated the truth on their own, not believing in vendor promises anymore. They found some websites and pro-privacy hacker which provided more background information, just look around you will find it too.
Finally it is confirmed that not only one spyware tool is bundled, many of them are... you can imagine more spyware, more money. Also the so called "Addins" get not uninstalled when you uninstall the Gnutella program. Users that unfortunately believed in vendors like Chris and his friend Vinnie will be spyed out for ever (or until the next harddisk crash or next installed windows version)! Oh wait, there are more embarrassing details. Some "Addins" come with the ability to get the newest spyware tools automatically! For example one 'hidden secret' of those sweet and highly technical parasites is, that some can automatically download more executable spyware code. Wow, without notice or permission. Don't wonder, but I think you don't wonder anymore. Those spyware tools are designed to spy out users much longer than Chris and Vinnie are in business and have a long history of abuse and improvement. Perhaps even they didn't know. They never looked inside the internal spyware code and they don't have a clue of what backdoor features are included. For example one spyware tool is named Gator. It's very smart and does download more spyware code in a tricky way. Whenever the user goes online it might use a minimum bandwith to download more executable code. The user will not notice it.

The end of the story? No, stay tuned for part two when we tell more about Vinnie, Chris, the big boss behind and a new shining knight that fights for Gnutella and suddenly falls again. Expect loyal users of Vinnie starting a unholy war against other vendors, some others denying the past, some fighting on the ground of P2P, with more lies, more propaganda and more action!!! Maybe we see more spyware creatures and maybe Trinitry in a naked role. Who's Trinitry? I don't know yet, the future isn't written, I thought it sounds cool for a teaser of the next episode and I was trying to be creative with the truth too.

To be continued....

PS: I guess you don't wonder why I wrote this tale... I'm angry about some people trying to fool us. I understand that programmers need money, I'm a programmer too and need to pay my rent or buy my food, daily caffeine (Coke) and high bandwith internet. But I first don't like people who tries to fool me and second I don't like dirty money. Right now the Gnutella developer community is a crowd of many volunteers, who did improve Gnutella free and together. Only two vendors try to make money with Gnutella, both do not have the most famous client yet. I don't want to be unfair, actually fairness was the reason for this story. I highly appreciate any work and research for the Gnutella community, but not for any cost and not without truth. Feel free to call me a rabble rouser now, I don't care. If Chris and Vinnie would be real persons in the real world I would say, please let's work together and find a way for paying your bills.

Link to AdAware again