CNets New Download Manager Installing Spyware

Thought I would download this new download manager as a test and 19 new spyware items were detected, all relating to Kontiki, the program used for this new service. I had my suspicions when I read their agreement before I installed it as well as following up by reading their privacy statement on their website. Considering the length and legal sound to it, I had my suspicions, have a look yourself if you can make it through it all:

http://www.kontiki.com/client/privacy.html

Download.com claims that it is not spyware:

http://download.com.com/1200-20-992315.html#01

Not all spyware is this easy to spot, but as a reminder, try and skim any agreements that may pop up before installing a program, especially anything installing from the web.
Note that removing this is a bit of a pain and requires editing the registry. I have submitted this information to Ad-Aware assuming this is a different execution of Kontiki that Ad-Aware and other tools will not clean.


Screenshot:

 

Oh yeah, the normal downloading procedure is fine, this just showed up recently, actually, tonight is the first time I saw it listed above the download link as an option. Since it is above the normal link, I believe a lot of people may use it. Luckily, most spy cleaning software has it tagged and will delete it.

 

Mmmmmmmmm I guess someone doesnt know there Spyware from Tupperware

I found this artical an interesting & insightfull read
When did it stop being my computer?

 

Was running Ad-Aware again and found a Kontiki folder had
returned in my Program Files directory! As soon as I deleted it, it immediately returns, which means we need to look into the registry.

I grabbed Registry Crawler:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/article.php?sid=477&cat=15

to count the instances of registry keys for this and got 13 more registry entries. I had to delete these keys through Registry Crawler and then reboot and finally delete the Kontiki directory from Program Files. It is finally gone.

Screenshots below show the directory created as well as the registry entries.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/images/cnet2.jpg