The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

I posted something to the uTorrent site about their reply to the "partner offer" outcry. Thought I'd post it here (edited so it's just one post rather than two) in case they delete my post or just oust the entire page.

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A few loud users aside, the community knows developers gotta eat. We also appreciate when software projects innovate to find new ways to make income. We certainly like free software and uTorrent does a great job.

However, you’re running up against an increasingly hostile and cynical public in light of a wealth of developers attaching more and more junk software. After the fiasco with Lenovo and the wide variety of programs employing OpenCandy garbage software, it’s no wonder. BitCoin — good or bad — still carries the pallor of Silk Road and other criminal activity. In terms of public relations, you’ve already lost this argument.

Maybe the users agreed to the install or didn't – it’s irrelevant. Calling your users liars and pledging to “keep looking into this” isn’t a recipe for success. The only obvious course of action is to offer these programs with the program set opt-out by default going forward. Think about it: antivirus companies are going to come out with an “auto-opt-out” option for your software and update those prompts like their definitions for malware. There’s already programs out there that do this: Unchecky: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS- ... ecky.shtml ... it’s just a matter of time before it becomes standard.

[ Posted: http://blog.utorrent.com/2015/03/06/reg ... er-offers/ ]

webfork wrote:Think about it: antivirus companies are going to come out with an “auto-opt-out” option for your software and update those prompts like their definitions for malware. There’s already programs out there that do this: Unchecky: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS- ... ecky.shtml ... it’s just a matter of time before it becomes standard.

Interesting view.

I see a connection to online advertising. For a long time, companies kept saying that they need ad revenue in order to continue maintaining websites. However, ads (Flash ads in particular) were found too annoying, eventually driving more and more people to install ad blocking browser extensions.

I wonder if the same thing will happen to crapware bundling.

As far as I'm concerned, any software developer is entitled to bundle his apps (or installers) with anything the human mind is able to conceive. Any crapware, malware, viruses or solutions to save the Earth and abolish hunger... whatever! But GIVE ME THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE! INFORM ME! STOP BEING DEVIOUS! Stop thinking inside the box! A small note next to their download link would be enough! If not, they will succeed not only to stop me from using their apps, but I will truly hate them forever! And I will tell all my friends about their practice!
In this case, I've seen enough info (articles, testimonies, screenshots) to understand that uTorrent owners don't really care about the users (I do believe they didn't know exactly how their bundle partner offers work, but this actually makes things worse). So, dear BitTorrent Inc., I simply hate you now!

P.S. Epic Scale is selling people PC's computing power! Most of the time without their knowledge! What sick, convoluted mind would invent such a thing?! And have you seen their website? It's like a fairytale! You feel guilty if you don't have their crap installed! I can't live on this planet anymore!

SYSTEM wrote:I see a connection to online advertising. For a long time, companies kept saying that they need ad revenue in order to continue maintaining websites. However, ads (Flash ads in particular) were found too annoying, eventually driving more and more people to install ad blocking browser extensions.

Agreed. It's such a strange landscape that I've only found one analogy for: in some sense, everyone's developed an ad-block in their heads by learning to tune this crap out, which has made advertisers think they've got to be brighter, more shiny, more annoying, louder, etc. to grab people, which only makes the situation worse. However, there's a way to still get the word out about your products without badgering people: massive sports events like the Olympics do this to some extent by developing a reputation for quality and entertainment. I'd like to see ad-block and anti-bundleware software that does (functionally) the same thing.

joby_toss wrote:Epic Scale is selling people PC's computing power! Most of the time without their knowledge! What sick, convoluted mind would invent such a thing?!

It's not all bad or mere fantasy. Folding@home for example does some amazing things with spare computing power that is currently doing great things in biology. The problem is that you HAVE to give consumers the tools to clearly and easily manage this, as computers run hotter when the software is enabled. Even if you ignore system instability this can cause, it can be a huge waste of power in hot/summer climates -- both via the processor and additional air conditioning.

Adding it as bundleware is a terrible idea because without very careful, easy controls (even FoldingHome sucks at this), you're really causing problems.

joby_toss wrote:As far as I'm concerned, any software developer is entitled to bundle his apps (or installers) with anything the human mind is able to conceive. Any crapware, malware, viruses or solutions to save the Earth and abolish hunger... whatever! But GIVE ME THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE! INFORM ME! STOP BEING DEVIOUS! Stop thinking inside the box! A small note next to their download link would be enough! If not, they will succeed not only to stop me from using their apps, but I will truly hate them forever! And I will tell all my friends about their practice!

• Crapware bundling is such a major problem right now, you get easy (bad) examples even from major so called security companies:
  
  • Privdog is Superfish all over again
    http://www.ghacks.net/2015/02/23/privdo ... ver-again/
  It has gotten so bad, HowToGeek.com is recommending Ninite as the only safe centralized source for freeware.
  
  • Ninite is the Only Safe Place to Get Windows Freeware
    http://www.howtogeek.com/201354/ninite- ... -freeware/
  See also their recent survey of freeware download sites:
  
  • Yes, Every Freeware Download Site is Serving Crapware
    http://www.howtogeek.com/207692/yes-eve ... the-proof/
  Last but not least, regarding the sandboxing alternative pointed to, anyone interested should refer to http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... hp?t=21885 ...

@webfork: Sorry for my limited English! The accent should have been on "without their knowledge" part and not on "people PC's computing power".

I will never trust nor use a software made by a developer who adopts this kind of tactics (using opencandy or similar for their software distribution). Only shady companies do that! The whole point is that they rely on people's lack of technical skills or attention during installation of ANOTHER software. Otherwise they will DISAPPEAR as a business! They are aware their software is JUNK! They know this is their ONLY chance to survive (and even get rich in some cases)!

P.S. Anyone curious enough to read Epic's EULA (carefully read it, you'll be amazed), here it is: http://pastebin.com/gYTTT05D Yes, I installed it today. Yes, I deleted every byte of it right after. But one interesting fact: right after installation you get a window with some options; the "Run Epic Scale" option is set to "CONTINUOUSLY" by default!

Fun stuff: https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/35ce ... /analysis/

Fun stuff 2: not portable!

Fu.k it, I'm done with this!

Bittorrent Inc. should have went the nagware route like WinRAR, Sandboxie, mIRC, etc. and sell lifetime licenses for home users and jacked up prices for businesses. If the software is good and useful, people will pay for it. They invented the protocol and sorta have the brand name recognition much like a coke or kneenex. They had a great deal of leverage buying out utorrent for it's popularity. Considering Winrar and mirc are still around today, maybe they would have made some good coin. But no, gotta be greedy and have ads and bundled crap.

Anyway, as far as I know, the epic scale thing has to be an installer bug and not intentional. Just looking at their poorly managed betas and changelogs, more of the recent developments has just been on making tweaks to the installer, useless pro features, and UI bugfixes. Their development system is so bad that some 'stable' builds have core functions broken sometimes. It's like they don't bother testing their own software.

As time goes on it seems like they just stopped caring about the quality of utorrent and it's users. It's all about the ad money now.

The download from uTorrent now runs the installer even if "settings.dat" is in the folder, meaning that the "how to extract" directions are now incorrect.

The install appears to be portable - it installs in the user's "roaming" directory, with no option to specify an alternate location. There are two adware offers in the installer that must be declined.

I'd recommend maintaining a link to the last version that acts as it used to, rather than changing the instructions to install-copy-remove, but I don't know what you moderators and more active members want to do.

The installer is a 7-zip archive. Extract with 7-zip or UniExtract. "Carrier.exe" is what we want. Rename it to uTorrent.exe. The other files are just installer junk.

Userfriendly wrote:The installer is a 7-zip archive. Extract with 7-zip or UniExtract. "Carrier.exe" is what we want. Rename it to uTorrent.exe. The other files are just installer junk.

Thanks! I should have considered that "Carrier.exe" might be what I wanted when I looked at the contents in 7-zip.

I have updated the "how to extract" instructions on the uTorrent database entry.

ashghost wrote:I have updated the "how to extract" instructions on the uTorrent database entry.

Thanks for that.

I found a good YouTube documentary about µTorrent's history.