RealPlayer flaws open PCs up to hijackers

[Rob R.]

Who would have thought such a fine piece of adware could open your PC up to hijackers! ;)

Zdnet article (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5154193.html)

[Baddog]

I never have been much Real Player.)-|

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Real Alternative:

http://home.hccnet.nl/h.edskes/finalbuilds.htm

--Jakk:t

[mireland]

Gosh, now I REALLY hate realplayer..:mad:

[EldestNorski]

Downloaded RealDone to see something -- forget what. I made the mistake of giving them a valid email address, but left only one box checked. I guess I'm ignorant, because I was unaware that offers to subscribe to music download services were product updates. :mad:

[G]

One of the Internet's worst-kept secrets is that RealNetwork's
RealPlayer is kind of sort of spyware-like and that many of
RealPlayer's optional downloads--the extra stuff you can download when
you first get RealPlayer--are full-blown spyware.

Because of that, many people have abandoned RealPlayer and switched to
competing programs like RealAlternative at

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4094.html

RealAlterative is certainly an, um, alternative, but if you are
married to keeping RealPlayer on your PC, Mac, or *nix box without it
spying on you, there may be hope. My good friend Lee Overstreet
recently posted step-by-step instructions on how to download and
install RealPlayer on a PC without having it take over your life.
Just point your web browser to

http://www.uacomputerhelp.com/

and click on the "Installing Real One Player" link at the bottom of
the page. Unfortunately, Lee's instructions don't talk about how to
install RealPlayer on a Mac or *nix box and disable its spyware-like
features, but with 100,000+ people on our little bus of Internet
happiness I am sure someone knows where I can find this information.

If you are using the free version of RealPlayer, chances are you have
an old version. Might I suggest you completely uninstall your old
version of RealPlayer--for instructions on how to do this on a PC,
take a look at http://tinyurl.com/ytzw4--and then follow Lee's
instructions to get the newest version?

Better still, you could instead uninstall RealPlayer and then pay a
visit to our friends at the BBC.

Huh? Well, this is kind of hard to believe, but according to an
anonymous poster to the Boing Boing blog,

The BBC made a unique deal with Real Networks which disposes of
their spyware tactics. Basically, if a user clicks on a link to
download Real Player from a BBC website, the referrer script
sends them to a page where they can download an expiry-free,
spyware-free and nuicance-free version of the player. It's
because the BBC have such a stringent public service remit, that
it was offensive to charge people a license fee for BBC content,
then make them pay all over again for the facility to view/listen
to it.

You can download the (supposed) non-spyware-like RealPlayer from the
beeb at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/audiohelp.shtml?help

Four different versions are available:

1. One for Windows98, 98SE, ME, NT 4, 2000, and XP.

2. One for Mac OS X. [See?! I didn't forget those of you who
compute with fruit!] :P

3. One for Windows 95 or Mac OS 8 or 9.

4. One for Solaris 2.6/2.7 or Linux 2.0

The BBC also offers step-by-step installation instructions. Pretty
cool, huh? And, to listen to any of the BBC's countless online
broadcasts, just hop on over to

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/

and click on the station to which you'd like to listen.

Enjoy!

[bob05]

I stopped using Real Player a while ago after I was looking through my computer and found a log file in Real Player's folder of ALL my music files and what times I accessed them (even when I didn't use Real Player to listen to them). That frightened me enough to stop using it. :eek:

[G]

No free lunch comes to mind ;)

[urdvurk]

Has anyone tried this RealPlayer from the BBC?
Not that I don't trust you of course, G. :)

[urdvurk]

According to this guy (http://jogin.com/weblog/archives/000504/) the BBC version isn't different from the regular version. I don't know though: the BBC installer has its own name and is smaller than the regular RealOne installer.

However, he also points to an Enterprise version of RealOne player, which is even smaller and supposedly really spyware-free. :t

[bob05]

Originally posted by urdvurk

However, he also points to an Enterprise version of RealOne player, which is even smaller and supposedly really spyware-free. :t

The lil' buggers at Real Networks want us to cough up dough for RealPlayer. Not me, mister. :t

[urdvurk]

Wot?

I got this Enterprise version this afternoon from the link on the page I linked to. I still don't know if I want to install it though. Even if it doesn't spy on you, the idea of software that you can't turn off and runs in the background all the time kind of puts me off.