I, like several others, have registered an account on this forum in order to post this one statement. You have mentioned your new "partners", as if it is an honest and natural relationship designed to enhance the product and/or user experience. In reality, like a 2-bit whore you "partnered" with a ruthless pimp. You sold your souls for the mighty buck. If installing the Conduit engine crapware behind the uTorrent client was NOT an underhand move, why didn't your installation program provide specific information upfront? You could have informed the unsuspecting user in a straightforward manner, perhaps with the following statement: "This uTorrent program will secretly install an intrusive spyware program on your system which, at the very least, will change your search provider in order to track your web browsing habits and present you with highly biased search results. The installed "toolbar" will, in fact, be a highly deceptive yet innocent-looking device which collects, stores and uses your personal data. This practice is something we consider a valid *marketing* technique, despite the extremely devious method of surreptitiously hijacking your computer, and is designed to provide us with FREE personal data which we, via our *partner*, sell to advertisers who pay hard cash." Instead, you present the user with a "I accept the License Agreement and Privacy Policy..." checkbox, specifically designed to deceive the totally unsuspecting user who is very accustomed to seeing such a checkbox, and thinks (without closer inspection) that nothing is untoward. You maintain that the toolbar is "optional", but you USE and ABUSE the TRUST of the user, that has often been built up over years of experience with the uTorrent client. And to associate Conduit with a "Privacy Policy" is an absolute joke. This is plain and simple SOCIAL ENGINEERING, a phenomenon well known from the hacking world (the bad side). You may twist your words and explanations in order to justify your actions (perhaps even to yourselves), but you KNOW that you have deceived and cheated on your customers. Shame on you! SHAME ON YOU! ********************************************************** 2010-12-10 11:35:42 CMeek BitTorrent Staff: "Recently, in an effort to provide a better browser bar and improved search, we've switched partners." > "IMPROVED SEARCH"? You have to be joking???!!! 2010-12-15 14:53:32 Firon Administrator: "And unfortunately, toolbars are a necessary evil to keep a company afloat. ... It's what pays for our ability to keep developing the client." > And spreading her legs is a necessary evil to keep a junkie hooker in heroin and crack cocaine. 2010-12-16 10:37:43 Firon Administrator: "It is not silent shovelware." > YES IT IS. And from Conduit's own website: http://www.conduit.com/resource-center/guidelines.aspx: "Marketplace Issues" "The app does not contain any offensive, explicit, or forbidden words and terms which may be sex- , torrent- , or gambling-related." > So no torrents then. Unless of course they can make money, right? Nice to see morals and ethics being upheld. http://www.conduit.com/Developers/facebook.aspx: 1. Facebook Connect: "Facebook Connect can be used to allow your users to securely log in to Facebook via a toolbar component or App. Once logged in, the calling page (in this case, the HTML App or gadget) has access to all the logged-in user's information ..." > HAS ACCESS TO ALL THE LOGGED-IN USER'S INFORMATION. And what do you think happens next? 2. 3rd Party Cookies: "Another method of sharing data between your Facebook application and the toolbar front end is by using 3rd party cookies. ... The 3rd party cookie method is best used when you wish to force the user to login to your existing application's Facebook canvas page before passing the logged-in user information back to the backend servers." > FORCE THE USER TO LOGIN ... BEFORE PASSING THE LOGGED-IN USER INFORMATION BACK TO THE BACKEND SERVERS. So this is how your "parner's" system works. Enough said!
