Ben Edelman has done an epic research project to establish just how bad most peer-to-peer file-sharing programs are. In What P2P Programs Install What Spyware? he looks at five extremely popular programs:
Request a peer-to-peer filesharing program, and you may be surprised what else gets installed too. I’ve tested five major P2P programs and analyzed their bundled software. Licenses stretch to as long as 22,000+ words and 180+ on-screen pages. Some P2P apps add additional programs disclosed only in license agreement scroll boxes. And it’s not uncommon for a P2P app to create thousands of registry entries.
The full test results prove in nearly clinical detail what you probably already suspected. Kazaa, Morpheus, iMesh, and eDonkey are riddled with bundled software that tracks your Web-browsing activity and shows ads in or around your Web browser. Kazaa’s license is the antithesis of transparency – if you want to read all 22,606 words you’ll need to hit the Page Down key 182 times.
Surprisingly, Limewire (which paid for Ben’s research) was the only program that installed no third-party software except the Java run-time engine, and whose only ads are for its paid version.
Excellent work.
Ed Bott 