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        New Message Board Archives >> February 2002 >> Some computer help:  Reader Rabbit games
        
(Message started by: van on Feb 19^th, 2002, 6:42pm)

Title: Some computer help: Reader Rabbit games
Post by van on Feb 19^th, 2002, 6:42pm

Last night I complained that my computer hard drive was running and running but I could not find a program which was running. Here is what i found out:

I had installed Reader Rabbit for my son to play. The Reader Rabbit games are distributed by Broderbund. Broderbund (others too) secretly install a sort of spyware program that collects info and trys to send that info back to the company. My firewall was blocking it, but the program was eating up computer resources--sending over 9000 requests per 30 minutes to try and contact the parent co over the internet. This made the hard drive work constantly and many programs were very slow.

My Firewall and virus protector missed the program because i installed the CD. The CD gave me the option NOT to install the dssagent program, but it did not follow my instructions and did so anyway.

So, I found the following sites, paid attention, followed their advice and the program is gone. I have back full system resources (cpu is not 95% busy and hard drive is quiet).

If you have installed these games, beware, but know of the fix. Other programs install the same type of programs.

Where I learned about the broderbund spyware:
http://cexx.org/dssagent.htm

Here is how to find stuff & delete in the Registry--be careful if you play with the Registry!!!
http://cexx.org/startup.htm#registry

Here is the site Broderbund offers to delete the registry keys, etc.:
http://support.learningco.com/brodcastpatch.asp

Good luck--follow directions to the letter on the above sites and you will be fine.

Title: Re: Some computer help
Post by jonny on Feb 19^th, 2002, 7:17pm

Thanks, Bro.........its a good thing to know.

Title: Re: Some computer help: Reader Rabbit games
Post by Frank on Feb 20^th, 2002, 2:32pm

If you're like me, you probably several other spyware programs running that you don't know about (Adware, Alexa 1.0-5.0, Aureate v1.0,2.0 + 3.0, Comet Cursor v1.0 and v2.0, Cydoor, Doubleclick, DSSAgent, EverAd, eZula, Expedioware, Flyswat, Gator, Hotbar 1+2, OnFlow, TimeSink v1.0,v2.0 and v5.0, Web3000, Webhancer, Transponder, Wnad,
ZapSpot, SurfPlus, AdvertBar, NetPal, CashBar and more... (updated regularly).

I use a utility called Ad-Aware 5.62 to remove them. Available here: http://www.lsfileserv.com/downloads.html
There is also an auto-updater (RefUpdate).

Title: Re: Some computer help: Reader Rabbit games
Post by David_M on Feb 20^th, 2002, 2:35pm

Awesome. I do so enjoy disabling the watchers!