Free Limewire installs TopMoxie: question:
 

LW developers/Adam, you seem to have avoided this question the three times I posted it in my now closed, previous post.

As it is now the main issue with LimeWire, please respond:

Can you answer the concern that TopMoxie is fraudulently acquiring revenue for Limewire by means of false referrals? I realize that other companies/non-profits use TopMoxie, that isn't my question.

In detail:

If I go to amazon.com (for example), of my own accord, TopMoxie redirects my url to make it seem like I was referred there by limewire. Limewire then gets a percentage of the money I spend. Is that not stealing from amazon.com?

If I was visiting ebay.com and clicked their amazon.com banner, ebay would not get the referral, limewire would. Is that not stealing from ebay.com?


Am I incorrect in my knowledge of TopMoxie?

Re: Free Limewire installs TopMoxie: question:
 

Did you investigated this?

Did you read it on a website?

Can you post links?

Morgwen

Thanks for a thouroughly honest and open reply.

Have you looked into an advertising recruiter? Sponsorship seems like a viable alternative.

Thanks to your fascist thread-close, I couldn't explain what Mike The LLama is.

http://www.winamp.com/team/

Scroll to bottom :-)

BTW, I wonder how you will be able to close news about first Java malware installed w/o users knowledge on news sites.

Even Bearshare (you know why I use "even" word) asks what to include in installation.

You abuse the granted access of Java to run your program to run another program which listens on spesific port.

Thats why (for now) there aren't furious posts on usenet over it, people (currently) doesn't know whats going on. For now.... :-)

I don't try to make you counter-productive but you should know TopMoxie is mentioned as a security risk already.

I say "risk", and that post is sure not a end user (add words like clueless etc) flaming, it comes from

" FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator"

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=to...sri.com&rnum=4

It came with iMesh once, now Limewire.

My last post on this forum, if I sounded agressive, yea sorry I was, because my machine was doing which I wasn't aware for hours.

I wanted to test if my quick hack worked on Java 2, making it runnable. Worked. Than remembered the famous "error 1608" appearing while trying to install Limewire, it didn't appear too :-)

There is a fix for the error 1608, another fix rather than Installshield corp. knows. Oh I found it myself, reported to Sun and several affected companies.

I remember the days when I was furiously advertising Limewire because

a) support of Java 2 platform
b) support of Spyware free programs.

If I was in these days, I would run to this forum and share that fix with anyone. But you limewire people changed. Not helping a haxorwannabe, script kiddie and also a Topmoxie distrobutor.

Cya when you remove that product from your distro. IMHO, Cydoor etc. are exteremely polite companies if you think of Topmoxie.

Bye

Well, my posting was a bit agressive too. The reason of this is mainly my experience with bugs in cydoor, which went from bluescreens and lockups all the way up to file system errors and heavy data loss. It wasn´t Limewire, but Imesh, it came with, but I know, Cydoor caused the problems, because they went away after deleting it with adaware.
BTW. The bandwidth Cydoor used, cannot be explained with only downloading banners. It was far beyond that.
So my question to the developers, what reason they have, to believe, what the Cydoor people say, after they had already once lied to them about a program.

The other question (to Gratis and other informed people) was, if TopMoxie or any other advertising method (except banners inside limewire downloaded by limewire, while limewire is running), spyware or maybe system reconfigurations à la "new.net" are known to be bundled with limewire under linux

Btw: I am a happy user of Limewire 1.7 . Great program!

Only the windows version contains bundled software!

Morgwen

I am having trouble understanding these posts also. A few of you guys are speaking english as a second language (pretty amazingly). The trouble comes in when you combine this with high-tech computer lingo....

You don't have to be registered to type a username in the "unregisterd" space. This would make it easier to see who is who.

**************
To the person talking about the "error 1608:" I have also thought about the potential problem in granting java access to use limewire, which could then run other java programs. Can you explain the whole story, from the beginning, in simple terms? What is this "hack" that you're talking about?


Peace

Quick hack meant its own meaning, not a hacker thing, its just a simple tweak to get rid of that error.

I didn't "die" to Install limewire but having enormious problems with certain sites (using Java 2 tech) using alternative browsers such as Opera, Netscape 6 I tried like dozens of things to make them work smoothly. At last I figured whats the problem with them.

Than I remembered "Errror 1608" while installing Limewire before, I re-downloaded it (I am damn sorry for that now), checked, no "error 1608".

I reported my quick fix (better than the hack word I assume) to several Java based companies affected including Executive Software having same problem.

Not Limewire, that TopMoxie must begone than we talk. I apreciate (REALLY) Limewire guys and respect them for coding worlds first really usable end user java 2 app but NOT Topmoxie.

Let me say, if I was an american, I would sue TopMoxie.

Also LimeWire developers, I am sorry about my flaming to you, at least half of it. As TopMoxie is an Java app too, I wrongly understood that you coded it too. As I know your programming skills, I was horrified.

Lets say, what about implementing this?:
http://www.opera.com/opera5/ads.html

Java would play with XML like a toy, especially Java 2 platform. Its purely opt-in and hundreds of thousands sent their profile to Opera soft with their own free will. My reason was, not to see stupid ads, at least the ads who may concern me and believe, when they are like that (whats the need of harvesting millions of URLs user visited, just to get a clue about their age etc) you really CLICK them.

Nobody currently "cries" that Opera is spyware too, its just because they are really opt-in.

As I was blamed to be counter-productive, maybe you would take it as my apologies. I am not generally agressive and anonymous like that.

Last note, get rid of TopMoxie, it will give you a REAL headache soon.

Have a nice day,

Ilgaz
Istanbul,Turkey

I am still having a hard time figuring out what you are saying. You ran limewire and got a system error? What does that error mean? Can you speak for the layman?

Everyone gets error 1608 so its on Limewire's own faq.

I say Installshield's solution doesn't work for everyone, I found another solution which works for majority of apps and not saying it because Limewire installs Spyware w/o users grant.

Isn't that easy to understand? Or I should attend a language course to say "I am NOT helping spyware to spread more".

Have a nice day

NO
 

No, you won't be able to get rid of this... What does TopMoxie does and how come you install w/o getting end users grant?

What makes you, elite coders of Java such money wanting people?

Whats the point?

BTW, I work in a media company and we are making it news soon.,

No need to make Topmoxie big news. If you look out on the net, you see, it already is.
What makes the programmers money wanting people? Kids to feed and so on. Really nothing objectionable.
But I have the same opinion as Gratis. If they want to make money through ads, they should give us a form to fill and make Limewire download the appropriate ads. They should trust their customers'opinions, because it just doesn give anyone anything, to fill wrong interests in such a form.
A dangerously buggy program running all the time in background is not necessary for that. A mysterious java hack, like topmoxie, even less.

Btw I am not a native English speaker, and I didn't have any trouble understanding Unregistered's posts

I cannot fully agree to that. If everyone exactly knew what Cydoor and Topmoxie is, it would be ok to say: Let us earn money that way or pay it to us. But the points are these:

*Cydoor: It is mentioned during setup, but:
1.) I have already told you about my cydoor experience, which involved everything up to file system errors and severe data loss. And I am by far not alone with that. A fair setup would not only talk about the intentions of a program, but also about severe side-effects due to poor coding, if they exist.
2.) Setup surely doesn´t mention, that cydoor comes from a company, that already lied to you once. I also wrote, that the bandwidth Cydoor used on my pc was FAR beyond the size of a few banners. This remains unexplained.
*Topmoxie: Leaving aside the issue of other advertising-powered companies, that work hard for -well- your money, this is screwing up the configuration of the browser. Side effects will be discovered soon, as it was the case with newdotnet.

The problems were, when I tried Imesh, but I clearly tracked them down to cydoor, as they went away, when I deleted Cydoor with adaware. Of course I know, that many other programs use Cydoor. I am by far not the only one who experienced such problems. They seem to be independent from the software Cydoor came with. All such observations have in common, that the trouble doesn´t start immediately. At the beginning the system is completely normal, then starts slowly getting slower and less stable. For me, for example, it took several weeks, to notice, something was wrong. In all cases, the problems went away after deleting Cydoor, but some people had to reformat due to file system errors in system files.
I started monitoring bandwidth after one month or so, and I don´t know, how it behaved before. There was constant background activity around 500 bytes/sec, so, if this was software download, the software must have at least dozens of megabytes of size.

I have to admit, this was with an earlier version of Cydoor. But since they never listed a bug of this kind as fixed, I am sure it is still there.

Personally, I like what LimeWire is doing with TopMoxie. It is unobtrusive and doesn't serve ads. I hate cydoor; I don't trust them and think they are a pretty shady company. I would personally rather have LimeWire code there own ad system that uses a profile filled in by the users.

Hi,

Just to remind, Opera and Cydoor TEAMED to make a XML based OPEN standard for OPT-IN based advertising.


No ever changing module names, "no run dll as service" tricks etc. Opera is CLEAN and sends only the data which user gave on his/her freewill. Be sure, if anything else happened, MS (and) Mozilla/TW Netscape would love to post the whole world. Little guy became real big player nowadays.

Even the ultra-paranoid Steve Gibson and Slashdot itself corrected theirselves calling Opera something else than Adware.

Figure that? I didn't say anything about Cydoor being. Oh, if I find it in my system, I would wipe it but you give users opt-in for that (with others except that topmoxie)... Its the key. Descriptive (even enough to bore users) windows stating what is going on, whats installed.

I mean, I tried to be helpful, you say Opera includes Cydoor. No it does not. At least its not on Spyware lists. It doesn't do anything secret, you give the exact info to it, like e.g. while you subscribe to Yahoo, even less!

Seems they didn't go chapter 11 so that scheme works I guess :-)

About Topmoxie not displaying popups (yes, you are right) what does it do than? How they make money? What do they collect?... Isn't my business anymore, I got rid of it, tried to alert users I know.

Have a nice day

To make it clear once more , Opera DOESN'T come with Cydoor, it USES open, XML based, documented technology joint created with Opera software and Cydoor.

Full details explained there:
http://www.opera.com/privacy/adinfo.html , I was talking about that thing... Like a user speaking on this forum. People trusts you. I would happily give my profile to you if you described how data would be used etc. Figure on that page, Opera says "all Opera code is developed, compiled in Opera software", you can guess the reason, people REALLY suspect Cydoor.

IMHO, if the advertising companies weren't so "rude" before, we wouldn't be using the word "spyware" now. Just an opinion though.

About others? Yea, all of them. Also I must admit, Limewire has been much more kind company compared to others.

Ilgaz Öcal
an Opera user

okay... so what will happen if i delete the cydoor.exe and all reg. entries... will LW still run..... ?

For anyone worried about cydoor and top moxie being installed with the free version of limewire go <a href="http://www.lavasoftusa.com/index.html"> here </a> and install adaware... gets rid of all the scumware that comes with LW. LW still works after spyware is removed.... or you can manually delete everything by going <a href="http://www.cexx.org/cydoor.htm"> here </a>

MAKE SURE you read about how to use adaware before you start deleting files with it!!

I am pretty sure disabling cydoor disables limewire (in older limewires at least).

I know how to use adaware.... i have been using for a while... i just got limewire though and it still works after running adaware.


but you are right.... if you are new to adaware make sure you know how to use it. Good tip Gratis

bump

WTF! This topic is over a month old!

and people still have questions about topmoxie. I think this thread says it well.