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New BitTorrent Browser Bar


CMeek

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Add me to the list of people who did NOT get the option dialog screen, and even if I did, it sure seems to be engineered to make you believe that you cannot upgrade your client without installing the toolbar (accent on the tool). This is a real douchebag maneuver, i gotta tell ya. I'm not going to claim to be so offended that I'll quit using your product, but you can bet your * that I'll be much more careful when upgrading it in the future.

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You don't have to install it.

Some of us didn't get the choice. I can assure you that the install dialog box that you showed us earlier NEVER appeared when i upgraded (I use Win7). Even if it had, it is very plainly worded in a misleading way, so that it appears that you have to accept the toolbar to upgrade (normally, when you hit the "No Thanks" button, it aborts the install, you have stated that it bypasses the malware and continues the install, which I tend not to believe).

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You can also uncheck installing the toolbar and hit install. Either way, the dialog is really for the toolbar, as you've already accepted the upgrade for uT 2.2 earlier.

_______________________

I too was pissed to find utorrent had taken over my homepage and installed their Google search instead. I was sure I did not chose that option.

Following instructions provided here, I then uninstalled and completely removed utorrent. I also had to uninstall Conduit. Shut down and restarted.

Then, to see if what we are being told here was true, that is, that we had to chose these options, I re-downloaded utorrent, being careful to not chose those options.

Sure enough, when I rebooted, there was utorrent as my homepage and the Google search was front and center once again in all it's glory.

Why can't you software developers leave well enough alone? You're improvements are not improvements, they are CHANGES. I didn't want a change. What are you doing, keeping your Indian programmers busy?

Take a lesson from the 1955 Chevy. Enthusiasts spend thousands of dollars to locate, rebuild, and refurbish these classics. Why? Because we like what worked well, was simple to work on and did what is was we wanted done - to go from point A to point B - in simple and elegant style.

Less is more.

I've once again unistalled utorrent and will find a '55 Chevy version.

Goodbye.

__

Uncheck all 3 checkboxes and you will not see the browser bar installed.

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________________________

Uncheck all 3 checkboxes and you will not see the browser bar installed.

Wrong.

I purposely looked for this, and unchecked all the boxes honey. And the browser bar was there as was my homepage taken over by the Google search page.

You've got a bug, buster.

Let's take another approach: let's say you're right and all of us are wrong. We're still right, because it's too darn hard to opt out or you've got the choice to opt out so well hidden, it might as well not be there.

Nothing pisses me off more than someone forcing their wares on me, like Norton. I call that Nortonizing. I went out of my way to get rid of Norton. And I refuse to use IE for the same reason and ditto for MSWord - I use OpenOffice and even use Drupal for my sites.

I was Nortonized by uTorrent.

___

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This is the classic definition of "guilty by association". utorrent is my first and only program I use and now it may be time time to find a new one. A well respected program is now going south. I hate to see that but it is inevitable unless you guys make major upgrade and ditch that toolbar.

I was mislead to install this toolbar because of "Term and agreement" option of the last check box. I regretted it immediately. For the argument sake, let's say I want to try out your toolbar and installed it. There should be a way to uninstall it safely and easily if I want to remove it from my system. May be you guys never tried to uninstall it before the latest upgrade was released. It is a shame really. I need to decide if that toolbar or whatever left from painful uninstall process is worth the risk compared to continue using utorrent. In the mean time, I'm uninstalling utorrent and trying out new ones. Any suggestion is welcomed because there will be tons of angry readers who are in the market for a new torrent program.

-bye utorrent

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*BS excuses about deceptive installation wizard pages*

Uncheck all 3 checkboxes and you will not see the browser bar installed.

I'll come back to that first part in a minute, the second part is more important and we wouldn't want you to reflexively ignore this post because you disagree with me. I have a picture of the dialog that pops up in 2.0.4 when you check for updates within the program (either manually or automatically).

xakas.jpg

Please highlight, describe or otherwise indicate the location of the three checkboxes on this dialog that allow me to opt out of getting my computer taken over by shovelware. Having a hard time doing that, are we? If you click yes on this dialog, there are no other pages, no wizard, it just updates and installs the default options, which include bloating up your machine with programs and browser addons, and changing your homepage and search options.

It doesn't matter if it shouldn't install this crap silently. It does. Whoever is in charge of your updater development fucked up. It happens; man up, admit it, and stop blaming the users for your mistake. The sooner you do that, the sooner you can fix the problem and proceed with attempting to salvage your reputation.

As to your earlier comment, the one that I paraphrased in the quote above, along with comments in earlier posts about toolbars being a necessary evil if you want to continue development and how everybody's doing it so it's not so bad:

That page in the manual installation wizard that has to do with the extra garbage is intentionally deceptive. Don't pretend you don't know that it is. It doesn't matter that it occurs after you've already accepted the uT upgrade, it contains the phrase "Accept terms and conditions" which always carries the implication that if you do not, you will not be able to install the program you want to install (that being uTorrent in this case). At its best interpretation, that third checkbox makes a potential user think that if they don't install the toolbar, uTorrent won't install, because you haven't accepted the terms and conditions. It's designed specifically to install something users didn't want.

Yes, users should read every word of every page of every installation wizard for every program they install. It doesn't happen. License agreements alone are dozens of pages of legalese, which is necessary for developers to protect their copyright. Users don't read them because of this very fact, and unscrupulous developers could easily take advantage of that, inserting clauses like, say, "user authorizes uTorrent Inc. to browse the contents of user's hard drives at any time." Legally and technically, the developer has done nothing wrong, because the user accepted it and it's all there in black and white. But there's a concept called "ethics" that marks the difference between respected developers and, well, developers like you.

To the point that toolbars are a necessary evil for revenue. There are a couple problems with your statement. First it's too narrow; advertising or sponsors are necessary for revenue if your program is large enough and developed full-time. Sure. But toolbars specifically? You can negotiate sponsorship deals that don't include dump-trucking onto your users' hard drives. Might I suggest a small (non-animated, for christ's sake) banner ad embedded in your program? AVG does it, and while I have my own problems with them lately their banner ad doesn't bug me, and it doesn't interfere with me using the program or doing anything else, like say, searching on the internet. Your advertising partners would get exposure to every user (as opposed to only those tricked into installing their product or victims of sloppy update routines), and it wouldn't create a mountain of work and bad will for the unlucky or unobservant. My point is that Toolbars and preference hijacking are not the only options, which is good because they are just about the worst ones.

Also, the argument you made that "everybody does it" (referring again to toolbars) is pathetic. Do I really have to trot out the "if everybody jumped off a cliff..." adage that all mothers use? In point of fact, not everybody tries to trick their users into installing bloated junk. Some developers are genuinely interested in creating a positive user experience and some businesses are profitable with this kind of thing as their top priority (in truth, not just in mission statements and press releases). Honestly, you should be embarrassed for making this argument.

Finally, if you really were concerned about "continued development" as you claim, you could make uTorrent open source. There are genius developers out there who would jump all over this thing. At the very least, someone could fork it and strip it down, and then you'd have today's big pretty version and a tiny, lightweight version like you used to. But that's not the case; you're concerned about making money. That's fine. Just don't insult our intelligence by pretending you're just trying to scrape together enough spare change from the couch cushions for just one.. more.. build... *swoon*

You could have somewhat salvaged this situation by

1) Promising to look into the silent shovelware installation and get a fix out as soon as possible

2) At least pretending to be apologetic about the (supposed) necessity of toolbars and emphasizing what the sponsorship dollars bring in terms of value to the product and its continued development

3) Perhaps looking into making the toolbar installation section clearer and more distinct (read: redesign it so it's not deliberately deceptive. You know it is. We know you know it is.)

What you did was

1) Blame the users for being stupid and not reading

2) Defend underhanded and deceptive practices

3) Ignore certain complaints and insist that what is happening should not be happening (auto-update silent install)

When there are problems, people are going to be angry with you. When you promise to fix them and then fix them in a timely fashion, your mistakes are forgiven and forgotten. When you deny that the problems exist and blame users for having problems, anger turns to rage and etches into memories. Word of mouth via the internet can be incredibly powerful. How much permanent bad will are you willing to risk?

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It is not silent shovelware. There is so far no proof that it is. We had the same kind of complaints when they were first added to the regular installer, and every single case was just that the users left the third checkbox turned on.

We already contacted several users who reported it (because we DO take the claims seriously), and so far, it's been user error for each person that responded.

If you believe you can reproduce it consistently, then send us an email.

Either e-mail myself or CMeek.

The screenshot you showed was for the 2.2 update itself. The next dialog (and yes, there is one!) is for the toolbar.

As for the toolbar itself, we've been up front about it and the reasons for doing it since day one. In fact, the whole point of making this thread was to be transparent and tell you guys that we are offering a toolbar during autoupdate and why we are doing it.

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Hi

Firstly I'd like to thank the Utorrent team for many years of service. Software, media and arts should be in the hands of the people, not the big companies. Utorrent has been at the heart of this major movement providing the needed momentum with a clean, free, lightweight piece of technology.The team here should be applauded for these efforts, and this cannot be overstated, many thanks.

Obviously I uploaded the update yesterday and got dupped into installing the ad/mal/spy--ware. (It also seems that some of this dodgy code is installed even if that third box is unchecked.) Anyway, following the install I deactived the browser bar and removed the conduit engine and bar using 'add or remove programs' in WinXP. From that point onward firefox stopped working, and the only thing that would connect to the internet is Utorrent (which by the way now writes itself into startup (almost impossible to remove even with my startup manager). Figure this: Utorrent was uploading and downloading even though I had no active torrent files, and at the same time no other software would connect to the internet. So I backup all my files. And use the laptop's recovery feature, then reinstall all my software. And there I was four hours later, time for bed.

I do understand the need for money. And to be honest if you'd instead done a donation scheme or something I probably wouldn't have donated, being a bit low on cash lately. However, many would have I think.

This move for money/profit stands for everything Utorrent isn't. Anyone reading needs to watch Zeitgeist Addendum (

) and any lecture by Jaque Fresco (e.g. http://vimeo.com/7866864) to understand this age old thing called Money!

Wish you all the best, and, again, this incident does not put a shadow on the good honest work done by this company.

Pete

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This move for money/profit stands for everything Utorrent isn't. Anyone reading needs to watch Zeitgeist Addendum (
) and any lecture by Jaque Fresco (e.g. http://vimeo.com/7866864) to understand this age old thing called Money!

Please spare us Zeitgeist, NWO theories, 9/11 conspiracies, and the moon hoax. :rolleyes:

You know, it's just µTorrent, a BT client...

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Please spare us Zeitgeist, NWO theories, 9/11 conspiracies, and the moon hoax. :rolleyes:You know, it's just µTorrent, a BT client...

No, this is not about a BT client, it's moreover about money.

And I don't know anything about those conpiracies, I simply referenced an accurate documentary about money and its social and psychological implications. The film is a bit arty though. Also, you are 'spared' by default as you don't need to click and watch. It's not being forced upon you, unlike the conduit engine.

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The logo on top of this page says:

"A (very) tiny BitTorrent client"

I can even swear the app's name is actually "MicroTorrent".

I find it amazing how lazy developers/managers try to resort to this type of malware infestation rather than look into all the new and elegant ways of monetizing applications.

So we get a bar + search hijacking + possible tracking today. What's next tomorrow? Bonzi Buddy?

Hi Frantic! As one of the uTorrent developers, I'm very interested in hearing about all the new and elegant ways of monetizing applications. Please let us know about them when you get a chance, and thanks for using uTorrent!

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Dear Admins & Developers,

I inadvertently installed the toolbar, through what I believe is due to deceptive practices, and like the others here, I am not to happy about it, even if you believe it to be a case of user error, or carelessness.

I understand why uTorrent needs to partner with companies such as Conduit. I am sure that you would be have a lot less fun on this forum justifying why the program requires a registration fee.

However, can you give me one good reason why the attached screenshot should not be used for all future releases.

The only valid reason why this would not occur in the next release, is because your deal with Conduit explicity involved putting in place a deceptive interface to trick users into install a toolbar by grouping what appears to be a terms and condition checkbox with thier toolbar installation checkbox.

GF7Lh.gif

Feel free to prove me wrong, and advise that something similar will be in the v2.3 release because it was not your companies intention to intentionally mislead thier users.

Edit: typo.

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Firon, I'm still baffled about torrent. I downloaded about 4GB of music (string quartets) with no problem at good speed.

At this point, not knowing that I was to save the torrent files for upload, I deleted them.

Then I started downloading Bach Cantatas from http://www.kickasstorrents.com/search/bach-cantatas-flac/ One volume came through with no trouble (BWV 10-12). Three stopped at 99.5%, .7%, .1%. The speed gradually got slower. Then I started talking on this forum.

Two days later I tried again. .7% increased to 94.6%, .1% to 82.6%. The five zeros were still zero. I started a new one (BVW 1-3). It went at 1kB/s sometimes higher but completed.

Three downloads are stuck at .995, .826, .946. They've uploaded that much. I started BVW 22-25. http://www.kickasstorrents.com/bach-sacred-cantatas-bwv-22-25-leonhardt-harnoncourt-vol-2-cd-2-flac-t1507870.html It's downloading at .7kB/s. Avail started at 1.676 went down to .070 is now at .960.

Is the typical? Am I being penalized for deleting the torrents? Can I do anything?

I want to download most of http://www.kickasstorrents.com/search/bach-cantatas-flac/. How can I tell whether these are really available? Why are they listed if they are not? Is there anything I can do? Or will they gradually become available?

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In response to your feedback that the toolbar offer was not clear, we have made changes to the install screen.

We take the reports of bugs very seriously. Both our team and Conduit's team have been investigating further whether there is any problem with the install, but we have been unable to find any evidence that the toolbar will ever install if you deselect all 3 checkboxes.

We also continue to investigate the reports of uninstall problem and are working hard to isolate any uninstall problem.

Again, if you have any evidence of this happening I want to hear from you at product@utorrent.com.

Catherine

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You just lost a lot of respect from me. You take a very unpopular and outdated feature and you add it to a client that should be free of stuff like that. That is a douchebag move, no matter how "voluntary" it is. I'm pretty good at seeing through stuff like that and unchecked all and hit the "No, Thanks" button, but now I need to go tell every person that I manage computers for, that they shouldn't use utorrent anymore as the people behind it wanna install unwanted crap on their computers. Another sign that you have become douches is the completely new design to utorrent. Users had become aquainted with your old design, but unless I wanna download a lot of skins, and replace a lot of icons people who uses your client will get confused by your new client. I might as well just teach to use a new client.

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I just downloaded Utorrent again today after not havin had it for a bit and boy do I love the toolbar!!!

Its simple..easy...and right at my fingertips...and its grand havin all my emails right there too.

The one thing I really enjoyed were the apps you can add ...first one was BitDefender antivirus! I hate bugs, viruses etc....oh and btw.......there is a new virus out (I have encountered it , first a few months ago...then just a few weeks ago......totally upgraded...grrrrrrrrr) It is callled ...Antivirus2010.

Beware!! you cannot do a thing once you get it ...it even shuts your antivirus down , you cant even get to C drive. Just thought I'd add that havin mentioned antiviruses....b4 you encounter it , google it...its nasty. Sorry for jumpin off the trail ..but , I believe its worth it for everyone to know of it!

Thanks for the great Torrent !!!

NO PROBLEMS WITH THE INSTALL EITHER!! ;O)

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You can also uncheck installing the toolbar and hit install. Either way, the dialog is really for the toolbar, as you've already accepted the upgrade for uT 2.2 earlier.
_______________________

I too was pissed to find utorrent had taken over my homepage and installed their Google search instead. I was sure I did not chose that option.

Following instructions provided here, I then uninstalled and completely removed utorrent. I also had to uninstall Conduit. Shut down and restarted.

Then, to see if what we are being told here was true, that is, that we had to chose these options, I re-downloaded utorrent, being careful to not chose those options.

Sure enough, when I rebooted, there was utorrent as my homepage and the Google search was front and center once again in all it's glory.

Why can't you software developers leave well enough alone? You're improvements are not improvements, they are CHANGES. I didn't want a change. What are you doing, keeping your Indian programmers busy?

Take a lesson from the 1955 Chevy. Enthusiasts spend thousands of dollars to locate, rebuild, and refurbish these classics. Why? Because we like what worked well, was simple to work on and did what is was we wanted done - to go from point A to point B - in simple and elegant style.

Less is more.

I've once again unistalled utorrent and will find a '55 Chevy version.

Goodbye.

__

Uncheck all 3 checkboxes and you will not see the browser bar installed.

oOOOoOO Harsh.....I had the options so maybe you might not be lookin close enough!! and also its choose not 'chose'.

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It is not silent shovelware. There is so far no proof that it is. We had the same kind of complaints when they were first added to the regular installer, and every single case was just that the users left the third checkbox turned on.

We already contacted several users who reported it (because we DO take the claims seriously), and so far, it's been user error for each person that responded.

If you believe you can reproduce it consistently, then send us an email.

Either e-mail myself or CMeek.

The screenshot you showed was for the 2.2 update itself. The next dialog (and yes, there is one!) is for the toolbar.

As for the toolbar itself, we've been up front about it and the reasons for doing it since day one. In fact, the whole point of making this thread was to be transparent and tell you guys that we are offering a toolbar during autoupdate and why we are doing it.

Yep I had the screen he showed and then I got the next one WITH THE THREE BOXES!!! So, either someone is not watchin installs or your computer might be eatin the words you wish not to see!!! Sorry dudes, I just got thru doin this whole thing not a half hour ago...........and it IS , as stated, 3 boxes to check or uncheck!!

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Thanks. Yep, today a seeder showed up for a .007 avail file which increased it to .819

You seem a little confused, not only are you posting in an odd thread you also haven't quite got what Firon told you. If a seeder came back the availability would be at least 1 if the availability of the torrent is less than 1 then between you and the people you are connected to there is not a complete file so as things stand you cannot complete the download. You are not being punished, the rest of the file simply isn't available, waiting might change it but there is no guarantee. You should look for torrents with multiple Seeds, an availability between 1 and 2 means there is only 1 Seed and if it often drops below 1 it suggests that seed is unreliable and you might never get the file.

Most torrent search sites tell you the health of a torrent (including the one you got your torrents from), look for ones with more Seeds. If you find a torrent that is a large collection and you don't want it all you can always select the parts you want so long as it is in separate files. Also once you have the torrent in utorrent there is a column that tells you how many seeds you are connected to. If the availability is 0 then you might not be connected to the tracker, look at the tracker tab to see if that is the problem. Find a good search site, btsites.tk lists a few and ignore torrents with no seeds and avoid those with only 1 or 2.

Hope this helps and you can leave this thread to those of us complaining about the new Browser Bar!

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While you at uTorrent are "working" on the "uninstall issue" make sure it REALLY takes away ALL files that damn conduit/uTorrentbar leaves in all web browser folders, though I did uninstall it accordingly to your description, such as:

C:\Documents and Settings\"username"\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\7m92clnf.default\extensions\{jf3295fa-e4b4-3fj2-af3r-9d7596i45bkc}\lib\xpcom.js

that xpcom.js java script file contains about 100 entries "conduit" in the code doing all kinds of fun, WOW!!! :rolleyes:

So I am now looking closer into using qBittorrent which I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, I did also start a new thread at their forum how to migrate unfinished .torrents from uTorrent so if you you like to check out qBittorrent as it is the most feature rich client which is also opensource check out their forum, and again I am not associated with qBittorrent in any way.

BTW, are you guys now blocking some proxies so we can't post harsh criticism anonymously, thanks but pretty lame and immature move. :rolleyes:

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Thanks BitTorrent, for turning such an excellent piece of software into BLOATWARE.

Make no mistake people, this is only the beginning.

You can expect seeing more useless junk sneaking into uTorrent in future versions.

Time to find an alternative.

And yes, i also registered on the forum just to say this.

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First, a sincere thanks to the utorrent creators and staff for years of free, lightweight and efficient downloading. Count me in as another user who registered just to say goodbye.

It's really hard to provide such a popular program for free, and I understand why your team probably thought of this as the lesser of evils.

One of the greatest things about utorrent was that when it first started, it seemed to stand against bloated, ad-ridden programs. It was one of the few programs on my computer that I really trusted, because it had the kind of "geek-cred" that can only be earned with NOT having to resort to toolbars and other unwanted add ons. Because I trusted utorrent, I probably did miss the checkboxes when it updated, but I sure don't remember seeing them.

For every user that posts that they are leaving, I'm sure there are many, many more who did not take the time to register. Multiply this by the fact that most of these users are probably the "go-to computer person" for their family and circle of friends, as was pointed out earlier, and you have quite an impact. It's not like utorrent will die or anything, and I'm sure the revenue brought in by Conduit was substantial, but you've lost a very powerful thing in the process- the trust of savvy computer users and the community at large.

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So very dissapointed...

Unlike most of these users I saw the dialogues and clicked appropriately not wanting the toolbar or my homepage changed, and trusting uTorrent I clicked install, much to my dismay. Immediately AVG pops up and says I have 2 temporary EXE's trying to install Malware and that it came from uTorrent.

Shame on you guys for pulling this! So you partnered up or something and are now trying to make money without being in our face about it, thats fine everyone needs to eat, however you picked the wrong partner because they just screwed you.

I too am another user who registered just to post and say that I will not be using uTorrent anymore.

The trust is gone, especially since after reading this thread you have no plans to remove it. I would simply to keep your users happy until you can figure out a way to make both Conduit and your users happy.

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What is the correct thread where I can ask about the problems and questions I have in using torrent? My download speed is now 0 to 0.1.

I think normally an admin would come into this thread to tell you to go to the "Chat" or maybe even "Speed Problems" forum section, they may be more appropriate for your situation.

However, you are getting useful answers compared to those supplied on the thread's actual topic -- but that could be because your problems are easier for the admins to address openly.

Good luck...

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