Spigot Search Protection?

[ktpg]

Hello today i installed µtorrent and later i checked my 'installed programs' folder and i saw i had something called 'Spigot Search Protection' installed. Did this come with µtorrent? Anyways i googled Spigot Search protection and people say it's a virus.

[ciaobaby]

If it did, you should pay attention during installation of ANY 'free' software.

[brucemc777]

Unfortunately, these folks who make an excellent product, have paired up with Spigot, whose reputation I will leave for you to decide from your own internet searches. Only if you are VERY careful will you notice it; you must NEVER take the "recommended" or "default" settings when installing software, Too many times, especially with "free" software, it is not in your best interest. This association is very, very unfortunate.

[Beasly]

Garbage, Garbage and more Garbage!...

There should never be an option to install Spigot, Conduit, etc. in the first place even if there is an option to opt out.

This will tarnish a so-called popular company big time but being that there are millions of users they don't think it will dent their rep drastically.

[riffermaddness]

I noticed this after the fact, and did some research on what actually occurred. I have used uTorrent ever since I remember, and I remember that during a fresh install or even during an update it would ask if you want to install the searchbar, I would always opt no. However, on an occasion where I wasn't paying attention the update was installed and I didn't uncheck the box.

Without noticing for a couple days, in my chrome browser bar the default search was changed to Yahoo. So, I went into settings and changed it. On subsequent restarts, it would revert back to Yahoo.

So, I got ticked off and deleted Yahoo out of the search providers altogether. On the next restart, Yahoo was back! I thought, how could this be? So, I dug a little deeper, checked chrome background apps and settings, with nothing! Where was it getting changed? So, then I looked at the address bar for the yahoo results and noticed a slight deviation from the normal search results of "google":

Spigot's Yahoo search bar:

/search?fr=chr-greentree_gc&ei=utf-8&ilc=12&type=714647&p=google

Normal Yahoo search bar:

/search;_ylt=A0oG7hbRbxJSHW4AyeCl87UF?p=google&fr=sfp

I don't know what's going on here, but I don't like it. So I found that it was running as Search Protection as many of you listed above. And this is total garbage, there's no way to tell if they are logging searches, or are hijacking your browser information, to play it safe, I am no longer using uTorrent as my bitTorrent application, they've sold out hard to these kind of activities and it leads to malware and viruses.

To find this Search Protection Bull S!@#$ just do a Ctrl-Shift-Esc to bring up the task manager, and you should find SearchProtection.exe or It might be listed as a startup App in Windows 8 so go find it there and get rid of this garbage data miner.

uTorrent can suck one. However, it's my fault for not paying attention.

[kop48]

Honestly, this is not acceptable, and the uTorrent team is taking advantage of the fact that people click 'I Accept' on EULA screens. I paid for uTorrent Plus, I shouldn't be having to be guarded against it trying to install crapware on my machine. Very, very disappointed, uTorrent team.

[DreadWingKnight]

and the uTorrent team is taking advantage of the fact that people click 'I Accept' on EULA screens

As are microsoft, oracle and a bunch of others.