Segosa from the Messenger Plus! IRC channel recently has outlined an interesting review on the newest released copy of MessengerDiscovery. Read on for details...
MessengerDiscovery is an add-on for MSN Messenger made in VB6. It has recently adopted a "Sponsor". But, what does this Sponsor consist of? This page will just be a quick unbiased look at what it installs.
On the 4th of December 2004 the installer available for download off the website didn't let you choose whether to install the sponsor (despite the website saying it was optional), when ran you were presented with this:
As you can see there was no choice. The very next day the installer had been replaced with one where the sponsor WAS optional.
I decided to do a test on a clean VM.
If you were to click on "I agree, install MessengerDiscovery with the sponsor" and click "Next", you would see this dialog:
At this point in time the "Sponsor" begins installing itself. If you had accidentally clicked on "Next" with "I agree, install MessengerDiscovery with the sponsor" checked and then realised you'd possibly accepted something you shouldn't have, the sponsor will install anyway.
After a successful installation of the "Sponsor" (takes about 5 minutes), IE pops up showing:
This gives us a clear look at one of the toolbars. A quick look at the new programs that appear in Add/Remove:
An interesting program:
New processes:
Adding up the RAM each of them is using totals ~50MB. That's quite a large chunk if you only have 256MB.
Ad-aware and SpyBot S&D scans:
Uninstalling MessengerDiscovery does not uninstall any of the adware/spyware. I installed its "Sponsor" twice (using the same installer) and on the first occasion "BargainBuddy" was not installed, however something else called "TSA" was. And on that note, I leave you with this:
Source:
m00.cx