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Mutant Death Pengwin from Medicine Hat on 2002-01-25 01:52 [#00074630] | |||||||||
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}http://www.deviantart.com/news.php?id=6494{ ""Recently, the POE news crew stumbled across some alarming spyware which attaches itself to IE and allegedly comes bundled with popular music download software AudioGalaxy. The program, called vx2, is shrouded in secrecy as to who runs it or how much AudioGalaxy knew about the application. Originally spotted when the POE writers connected it to pop-up ads not being launched by their site, but their computer, the vx2 trail uncovers some startling security breeches before it falls off a cliff. vx2 may not only quietly monitor the time and date of the pages you view, but actual information entered into fields on these pages, with the potential to record passwords, credit card numbers, and more. "This means that if I send a private email using a web based email service, this invisible program will - at its own discretion and according to some unpublished criteria - effectively forward a copy to the good people at vx2," discovered Chet and Erik of POE News. Search your C: drive for "vx2.dll" and then head over to POE News to find out more about this latest spyware threat and information on its removal."" }{ ]http://www.poenews.com/inhouse/vx2.htm[ Where Are These Pop-Ups Coming From? (You wish this was just about popups, but it's about much more.) 01/20/02 By Chet and Erik What would you think if I told you someone was monitoring every page you visit, every form you fill out, and every web email you send? This article covers a company that's doing just that, and how they're attempting to hide what they're doing. I'm going to admit this right off the bat: I am not a super smarty. Unlike Steve Gibson, I can't trace hackers back to their IRC lairs to debate them. I stumbled across what I'm covering here simply by being annoyed. Luckily, it happened to fall within my tiny sphere of knowledge. Please don't skip the whole article because you think the first few paragraphs don't relate to you. This is about more than one piece of software behaving poorly; it's about an industry paying lipservice to privacy, and then doing whatever the Hell they please. In other words, this could be the future of software. Have you had an ad pop-up while you've been browsing lately? Has it happened on a site that doesn't normally have popups? But you run adaware, right? Think you've blocked all spyware and embedded ad-serving software? Wrong. (Update the latest version of Adaware 5.62 and the new reference file will catch it, you must make sure to be using the latest reference file.) Welcome to the shady world of VX2.cc. You're going to wish popup ads were the worst things you had to worry about. There are minor spyware programs out there, with Gator being the most notorious. When you install some freeware, such as Kazaa, you'll often be asked to install a separate add-on. It's usually described in vague terms as some sort of ambiguously helpful component of the main program. This is disengenous, but, generally, you're at least given the chance to skip the installation. Other software requires you to install some form of spyware. The name's pretty sinister, but, for the most part, all it really does is permit ads to be served inside the client software. While I'm not crazy about all this extraneous crap being installed on my system, I understand that it's needed to serve the ads. I can accept this as a component of free software. Unfortunately, as I recently learned, not all of these little buddy programs are so relatively benign... Over the weekend, I noticed popups appearing on POE. I knew we weren't running these type of ads, so something was obviously wrong. Additionally, Internet Explorer was crashing singnificantly more often than usual. I right clicked on one of the apparently spontaneously generated popups and checked the ip address. It led me to ads2.vx2.cc. Who runs vx2? The website doesn't say. However, it does mention this: VX2 Corporation is a marketing reasearch company. Our "Sputnik" software builds information on internet trends. Sputnik plugs into IE Explorer and operates in the background. The software goes along with the user of the software as they are surfing around the web and builds reports on the activity. Sputnik is distributed via co-bundle agreements with popular third party software companies. So that doesn't give us much information. But it does tell you how it gets around your firewall and Adaware: It attaches itself to Internet Explorer. Next, I checked the site's whois record: Domain Name: VX2.CC Creation Date: 010731 Nameservers: NS1.VX2.CC NS2.VX2.CC Registrar: Network Solutions Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com Not very helpful. I guess whoever owns this domain is not incredibly proud of that fact. As further evidence of this, all the forms on the website get mailed back to a hotmail account. Since I was still on the vx2 site, I figured I'd check the FAQ. Here it is in its entirety: VX2 Corporation is a marketing research company. Our "Sputnik" software builds information on internet trends. Sputnik plugs into IE Explorer and operates in the background . What Does the VX2 Software Do? The software monitors the click stream activity of the consumer and communicates with servers. How Is VX2 Distributed? Sputnik is distributed via co-bundle agreements with popular third party software companies. How Does The VX2 Software Work? The software monitors some activity of the PC and communicates with servers. It's short, so I read it twice trying to find the part where it says it's going to deliver popup ads to me. You can check my work, but I couldn't find that part. In fact, forget about the popup ads. Two-thirds of the answers describe how vx2 is actually monitoring my activities and filing reports back to its home office! The FAQ first alludes to the vague, but at least sort of specific sounding, "clickstream" monitoring. By the end, though, the vx2 people have broadened the scope of their monitoring to include "some activity". What the Hell falls under "some activity"? Evidently, that's not asked frequently enough to make it into the FAQ. So there's a program called vx2 - installed without my permission and without my knowledge - that is collecting some unspecified data from me and sending it to a company also called vx2, whose site isn't very clear about who they really are. The site does permit you to file a request for them to delete all of your data. But there's one catch: the request form asks for more information than it could have ever collected from "clickstream" data. Or at least that's what I thought. To have your data deleted, it asks for your physical address, full name, and email address. Do you really think this information is needed to delete the current tracking they have on you? How could they match to this data? Where in the Hell would they get your physical address? From you, of course. At this point, I had two major mysteries on my hands: How did vx2 get onto my system, and what was it really monitoring? After checking through a few recently installed programs, I figured out that vx2 came packaged with Audio Galaxy. Since they saw fit to place it on my system, I thought they might have some info on vx2. But the only mention of vx2 occurs during the Audio Galaxy installation. Buried at the ass end of the Audio Galaxy terms of agreement is the following text, reprinted here in full: Onflow along with VX2 has created this statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to internet privacy. The following outlines our information gathering and dissemination practice: Our Authoring System requires authors and publishers to register on our web site. Our registration form requests that authors and publishers give us contact information (such as name and email address). We use this data to send you emails containing updates to our Authoring System and/or the availability of additional services. You may opt-out of being contacted by us; see "Choice/opt-out" below. We may publish online surveys from time to time. Data collected is used to optimize our service and to provide customer support. Now we can associate an actual company with vx2: Onflow.com. Why all the secrecy about the vx2.cc domain? What do they have to hide? If you go to Onflow.com, you will find exactly zero mentions of vx2. So is vx2 Onflow? No one appears to want to come forward as being vx2, yet Onflow and vx2 are willing to share the same terms of agreement. Normally, if two companies were both bundling their add-ons with a piece of software, there would be two completely separate agreements and privacy statements. Here's more from the Audio Galaxy terms of agreement: Player Privacy The following information is specific to the Onflow Player, which allows users to enjoy rich multimedia displays through your browser. Data transmitted Each time the Onflow Player displays images, it transmits data to our server such as the serial number of the Player, the image displayed, the web page in which it was shown and whether you moved your mouse over the image or clicked on it. This data does not identify you. Other Disclosure It is possible, though unlikely; that a subpoena, court order or similar cause could require us to disclose information we have concerning a particular Onflow Player or a particular registered user. Should that occur, we would have to comply with legal requirements. Policy changes We may change or supplement our policies as needed. We do not use personally identifiable information for any other reason than account maintenance and to notify you of special offers. If this policy changes, you will be notified via email. Our current policy can be found at our web site; please visit us at http://www.onflow.com to review our most current policy. So, they track their ad, whether or not I clicked on it, and - and this is an important part - "the web page in which it was shown." But vx2 attaches popups to arbitrary pages, such as the ones I encountered on POE. This indicates to me that vx2 is actually reporting on whatever page happens to be showing when it squirts out one of its popups, effectively tracking the sites you visit. Troubling as that is, it gets worse: Security This site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. Onflow maintains strict internal practices that help protect the security and confidentiality of this information by limiting employee access. Choice/Opt-Out Our site provides users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from us at the point where we request information about the visitor. For more information about opting out, click here http://www.onflow.com/about/unsubscribe-newsletter.php Unfortunately, the opt-out link only leads to an easy way for Onflow customers to opt-out of receiving newsletters from Onflow. There's no mention of how to opt-out of vx2 spying on your browsing habits. If you want to do that, the vx2 site offers a convoluted way of disabling its software. Okay, last excerpt from the Audio Galaxy terms of agreement: Contacting the Website If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this web site, you can contact us at info@onflow.com The VX2 privacy Policy and terms of use is also available by clicking on http://www.vx2.cc/privacy.html Notice the runaround? Onflow doesn't mention the extent of what they are doing, but they admit that they are at least working with vx2. At this point there's no evidence that Onflow isn't, in fact, the owner of vx2. And as I'm writing this, no phone calls or emails to Onflow have been returned. Also notice that the actual vx2 privacy policy that you're agreeing to is only available on the vx2 website and not in the body of the terms of agreement itself. I grabbed vx2's privacy policy and stuck it here. Let me just quote one little section. VX2’s software also collects some information from online forms that you fill out. This information is automatically sent to VX2 in order to save you the time and trouble of submitting such information to us yourself. We have undertaken technical measures to make sure that VX2 never collects credit card numbers, account numbers or passwords. If such data data were, despite VX2’s best efforts, ever inadvertently collected VX2 would immediately purge such information from its database. Holy crap. What time do they think they're saving me? The time I was going to have to spend telling them that I was searching Google for pictures of Supermodel Trish Goff? This goes well past knowing what browser I use, what my screen resoultion is, or even what sites I'm visiting. This is picking up personal information to attach to a profile. This means that if I send a private email using a web based email service, this invisible program will - at its own discretion and according to some unpublished criteria - effectively forward a copy to the good people at vx2. Call me ungrateful, but I'm not sure how helpful this service is to me. Remember, this information is being sent to a site with no whois record that you can only communicate with through a hotmail account. Spammers give you more information about themselves. The bottom line is that Onflow and Audio Galaxy are being purposefully misleading. When you install Audio Galaxy, it should clearly state that if you install this software, we are going to grab data from every form you submit and send it back to our servers for storage. Popups be damned - what Onflow and Audio Galaxy have done is well past the annoyance level of popups. It's bad that they've invaded your online privacy, but it's worse that they've attempted to hide what they're actually doing. This cannot continue. Now is the time to put an end to spyware. If you live in the United States, please contact your local congressman and state senator. If you're outside the U.S., first put down your Anti-USA picket sign and then contact your elected official or tribal warlord. The situation has passed the point of self policing. Onflow's actions combined with the "Trust-E" symbol on the Onflow site has made it pretty clear: a watchdog group that accepts significant funding from the very people it's supposed to police is worthless. (Here is just one nice coupling of Microsoft being caught breaking their privacy statement and then donating money to E-trust to jointly offer some service no one uses. I guess these same people would wonder why the mob can't donate to the Policeman's ball.) While our elected officials take their damn time, don't waste yours. Avoid any company that works with Onflow or Audio Galaxy. Write to any artist that's listed as a partner on Audio Galaxy's site. Tell them why they should leave. Contact every company that has something to do with Onflow. www.vx2.cc is hosted by hostway.com - 800-397-2449 vx2 served ads are hosted by openworld, stdio.com - 888-465-WRLD Please, take the time and contact as many of these people as you can. Be polite, but be firm. They probably had no idea their ad was being used to steal form data. After examining the list, it looks like CBS news needs to get a new tech reporter...x2.cc ][ hope you all are happy with audio gallaxy!! |
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Mutant Death Pengwin from Medicine Hat on 2002-01-25 01:57 [#00074631] | |||||||||
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]http://www.poenews.com/inhouse/audiogalaxy.htm[ We've been in contact with an Audiogalaxy PR person and are less than happy with his response. At first, he didn't want to reply in writing. When pressed, he eventually sent this meager paragraph: Re: POENews Story: Where Are These Pop-Ups Coming From? Hello, Audiogalaxy does not bundle Onflow or VX2 software with the client. The only pieces of software that are installed that are not part of Audiogalaxy is Gator (if you select it) and web Accelerator (if you select it). Hope this helps It doesn't help. We don't consider this an acceptable response. While they have removed VX2 from their newest installations, as recently as four weeks ago versions existed that included the program. On the phone, the AG rep would only say, "the point is moot, past history." We asked for a clarification as to why it was included in past versions and have received no further response. Other than to deny that vx2 is bundled with its software - and by implication, deny that it ever was - Audiogalaxy will not discuss vx2 at all. Contrary to their terse statement, the point is not moot for the thousands of Audio Galaxy users still transmitting data to vx2.cc. Audiogalaxy owes it to their users to admit the mistake, explain the policy that led to it, and publish detailed instructions on how to remove vx2. So, while the current version of Audiogalaxy may not include vx2, it was bundled with the software as recently as a month ago. And as of 01/22/02 at 3pm, the current version still includes the VX2 and Onflow sections in its Software License Agreement. Audiogalaxy chose to not change the version number and change the install package. From the "important notes" section at the end of the current install: Quick break down of the install process: *Gator.com installation program is installed if you choose it (opt-out). It is never fully installed by Audiogalaxy, but slowly downloads the contents of the real Gator.com install over a period of time so your internet connection will not be bogged down. After the installation is downloaded from gator.com you are given a choice if you wish to proceed with the installation. *eAccelerator - you are given a Yes / No choice during installation. We highly recommend eAccelerator as it will speed up your browsing of Audiogalaxy.com and other internet websites by employing advanced caching techniques No longer bundled: *webHancer is installed on everyone's machine - it can be uninstalled by going to control-panel add/remove programs (webHancer reports network latency about websites you visit - they throw away your IP address BTW so its anonymous) *********** We HIGHLY recommend that if you wish to remove everything from you system (including Audiogalaxy Satellite) that you use the Add/Remove feature in control-panel. Using programs like AdWare by Lavasoft have been know to crash systems because they improperly remove programs. First, hopefully it's just a typo that the Gator software is installed if you choose to opt-out. The bundle also installs a link to BonziBuddy in your start menu. Bonzibuddy is not mentioned anywhere in the agreements or important notes, and no option is given to not install it. No spyware is installed with the current package if you opt-out of the two extra packages. While they warn you of using Adaware to remove any of their add-ons, they neglect to tell you how to remove their spyware that did not add an entry to the Add/Remove wizard. We hoped that Audiogalaxy would want to come clean and clear their name. But after this anaemic, evasive response, it's pretty clear to us that Audio Galaxy won't admit to past misdeeds and have no desire to help the users they screwed by surreptitiously bundling malignant spyware with their software. Please urge Audiogalaxy to admit their past mistake, inform users that they may have been infected, and explain to these users how to clean VX2 out of their systems. ][ |
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Mutant Death Pengwin from Medicine Hat on 2002-01-25 02:01 [#00074632] | |||||||||
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http://www.poenews.com/inhouse/onflow.htm Onflow's Response We have been in contact with Onflow over this issue and they have clarified some points and seem truly innocent of this whole incident. They were very helpful and open about their past relationships with delivery or spyware companies and how they quickly realized that is not a good solution. That is not their business. I believe them. Audio Galaxy has not been near as forthcoming and as of this being posted, we do not have an acceptable statement from them. When asked about the following line in the Audio Galaxy user agreement; Onflow along with VX2 has created this statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to internet privacy. Onflow responded with: It is a glaring error we have absolutely nothing to do with VX2, we have never even heard of it until today. I don't know who put that statement together but it definately wasn't anyone from our company. Here is there complete statement about this article. This statement is to address the article on www.poenews.com titled "Where Are These Pop-Ups Coming From?" of 01/20/02. Onflow is not responsible for the pop ups described in the article nor is Onflow affiliated in anyway with the company VX2. The article confuses the activities of Onflow with the activities of VX2. Onflow has had no awareness of this company's activities until today. The statement as follows explains what Onflow does. The Onflow player is a graphics plugin (similar to Flash) and is distributed by various partners in conjunction with their download. They should have a line in their user agreement that says so. One of our recent partners, Audio Galaxy, has inadvertently implied that Onflow is the same as another one of their partners, VX2. This is false, Onflow is a stand alone media player that has nothing to do with VX2. The Onflow player DOES NOT spawn any windows nor pop up any ads. The Onflow Media Player is dormant and only plays media files with the .ofb extension. So if an author has created an Onflow composition, a user will need the Onflow player to view it. One of our markets is online advertising. Because our animation is so powerful and interactive advertisers benefit from this and use it to create visually stunning advertisements. As part of Onflow's advertising service we provide the advertisers with anonymous data about their ad campaign. Onflow does not record any personal data. If you were surfing a website and encountered an Onflow ad (as opposed to an animated .gif or a Flash file) the Onflow player would play the ad and report back what ad you saw (Car Ad #245), where you saw the ad (www.cars.com), when you saw the ad (1/22/02), and if you clicked on the ad. All this data is available through log files and the website's ad serving software. It's everyday data that is an industry standard. Onflow has been used for things besides advertising as well. It has been used for website design, game creation and email greeting cards. Onflow is a general purpose rich media format and can be used in a variety of different ways. If you would like, please go to Onflow's site and look into the gallery at some of the content we have created. You can go into the Authoring system and author your own pieces of Onflow content as well. The animation is unlike anything you have seen on the web. Onflow regrets any confusion that might have been caused and encourage you to contact us with any other questions, comments and/or concerns that you may have. Product Manager Onflow Corporation Contact: Monica Email: info@onflow.com |
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Mutant Death Pengwin from Medicine Hat on 2002-01-25 02:03 [#00074634] | |||||||||
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their y'all go! i even went the extra mile and put in some bold and italic stuff! i hope some of you who actually care about stuff and such actually had the attention span to read all of that. i would not be surprised if 99% of the people on this board did not read that. |
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Taxi on 2002-01-25 02:33 [#00074647] | |||||||||
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I skimmed it. Will keep my eye open, altho I have no vx2.dll on ma puter. Thnx anyway :) |
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StueF from does it really matter? on 2002-01-25 03:17 [#00074668] | |||||||||
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wouldn't doubt it, vx2 isn't on my box, thanx for posting the warning though. "$+) |
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Mutant Death Pengwin from Medicine Hat on 2002-01-25 16:29 [#00074858] | |||||||||
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doesn't anyone care? |
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Ophecks from Nova Scotia on 2002-01-25 17:16 [#00074874] | |||||||||
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No. Go back to your iceberg! :-p |
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nostradamus on 2002-01-25 17:38 [#00074885] | |||||||||
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I care because you do |
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Mutant Death Pengwin from Medicine Hat on 2002-01-25 17:49 [#00074887] | |||||||||
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ophecks, you are pushing your luck!! i might go over to newfoundland and eat all the fish. i am really hungry and that would be quite filling. with out fish you will starve to death!!! and be unemployed!! |
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Xanatos from NYC on 2002-01-25 19:37 [#00074916] | |||||||||
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yep, I have vx2.dll on my computer, now I go back and read the rest of the thread |
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m on 2002-01-25 20:00 [#00074923] | |||||||||
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There is also a secret spying file called config.sys Delete it immediately or they will spy on you! Make sure you don't have it! |
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StueF from does it really matter? on 2002-01-25 20:03 [#00074924] | |||||||||
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lol |
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Eoin the bar of chocolate from underneath the curtains ridin ur mahder on 2002-01-25 20:16 [#00074926] | |||||||||
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i wondered why audiogalaxy wasnt being filtered so you couldnt get songs from certain bands etc. Those guys at onflow have it so if a fuss is kicked up about vx2 they can have a nother mental napster media explosion to steer away the obvious privacy intrusions(maybe) Thats some fucked up shit right there! |
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Mutant Death Pengwin from Medicine Hat on 2002-01-26 03:43 [#00075005] | |||||||||
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m, i deleted this config.sys and my computer won't boot up! what did i do wrong? maybe it automatically destroyed my computer innards and such upon deletion! |
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nancykitten on 2002-01-26 03:47 [#00075007] | |||||||||
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maybemaybe |
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m on 2002-01-26 04:35 [#00075011] | |||||||||
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Oh man, I guess you were too late... shoot! |
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digidogheadlock from under a rock on 2002-01-26 06:47 [#00075034] | |||||||||
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morphous and kazza installs spyware too but a handy lil tool called ad-ware (download.com) will search your comp's harddrive and registry and then gives you an option to delete it. you have to expect spyware in alot of freeware software, some they warn you about befroe installing, like gator, others they install w/o informing the user.. |
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Mutant Death Pengwin from Medicine Hat on 2002-01-26 17:28 [#00075086] | |||||||||
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i have ad-aware and it got rid of that vx2 a long time ago. i figured a lot of people on this message board would use audio gallaxy, so i should inform them all of this bad thing! |
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Ophecks from Nova Scotia on 2002-01-26 18:10 [#00075090] | |||||||||
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Config.sys... sounds important. I am clueless with computers... What happens when you delete this? I'm a curious cat, and I almost want to TRY it... |
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aperson on 2002-01-26 19:42 [#00075111] | |||||||||
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You have to format your computer because that file is necessary to boot your computer up! =D |
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StueF from does it really matter? on 2002-01-26 19:53 [#00075112] | |||||||||
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yeah config.sys is one of those important system file type things. they usally arn't good to fuck w/ unless u know what ur doing. i wouldn't delete it if i was u. (unless u make a boot disk first) |
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Mutant Death Pengwin from Medicine Hat on 2002-01-26 23:00 [#00075146] | |||||||||
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m was kidding about the deleting config.sys!! |
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