What does MessengerDiscovery install?

[detn8r]

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

[duphus]

Funny, the guy who made this used to give Patchou a real hard time about HIS sponsor in Messenger Plus!.

[Jeff]

Devious. Spyware and adware are a huge problem. Generally, the people who are most likely to get infected are the least likely to know how to undo the damage. As a result, their computer just gets slower and more unreliable until then finally go out and buy a new computer. Of course ANY new computer will seem faster without adware, but in time... their computers will be bogged down again.

[xerraire]

duphus, the change of heart could be that it was financially attractive to do so.

What is needed is education so that computer users learn how not to be fooled, then these spyware people will have to figure out a new way to con people.

In just 3 recent occasions I have had to rush to friends houses and 'fix' their computers. They were amazed to learn that they had nearly 300 instances of Spyware on their computers, each. They were also amazed how wonderful their computers ran once they were cleaned up.

The only thing I knew to tell them was to turn active x off (or at least to prompt) on their IE browsers.

[ecko_complex]

I can tell already this thread is going to be very one-sided. So my only words are to check the following URL:

http://www.messengerdiscovery.com/fo...f=7&t=188&st=0

It answers most of the questions/points made here, if there are any more feel free to PM or post something here and I'll gladly publically post my reply and the question on my forum .

[Replicarter]

I dident get the Power Scan lol, I downloaded this last week and I was the one who brought it up in the message Plus chat, first I got my head bitten off being told it was optional, but after a few people downloaded it people rerlised that day you couldent not instal the sponserware, so whats your comment to that ecko?

[ecko_complex]

That has already been answered under "I got an installer that doesn't allow you to install without the sponsor. I thought it was meant to be optional!" if you follow my link above. You should never get one where you cannot install the sponsor.

[Replicarter]

You dont check everything before you make them available to thousands of people? Or atleast the instaler? And why do you have so many different products, 50mb is a lot to have in your processes, why not just 1 tool bar?

[Dreamingweb]

I'm not against adware - but filling it with that much takes the piss.

[Reinholder]

alright so the installation is optional. now you have to factor in two things with this:- messenger discovery is a bag of nails, and IST bull****s their way through most programmes; even if you select NOT to install the programmes, it installs it anyway...so ask yourselves this; why in the living hell would you want to install a substandard programme anyway? I'm using MSN 7 beta right now, found a patch that pretty much does waht messenger plus or messenger disocvery does, with the added bonus of not crashing my system every five seconds.