Isposure Spyware?

Hi - I note from your site that:

bbMeter performs passive monitoring of your connection to help you record statistics about your connection and usage. The isposure automated testing software does active testing to measure how good your connection is for different Internet services such as web browsing and VoIP traffic. The statistics generated will be used to build a larger picture of how broadband Britain truly performs.

This implies that isposure must be sending statistics it has created for a user's connection to a server for later retrieval. Is this the case?

Bob.

Yes see - http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/tbbmeter/t/3490749-...

Thanks. A pity this activity is not spelt out before the software is installed.

This says to me that this "phoning home" activity is being deliberately shaded from the end user by thinkbroadband and as such satisfies the definition of *spyware* and I will treat it as such. I will uninstall both programs as software provided by thinkbroadband clearly cannot be trusted to be free of malware. If they hide the data collection and "phone home" aspect and give no indication of how anonymous that data collection may/may not be at the time of installation then what else may lurk in this software?

I would have thought that any legitimate supplier would realise in this day and age that not spelling out exactly what software does, especially when it "phones home" is a recipe to be treated as malware supplier.

Bob.

If you are concerned! You can remove the Isposure software, It is not necessary for the operation of the ttb meter. Once removed it will not be reloaded when you update the ttb meter software. But be aware removing the software does not remove the Isposure directory or the files. They are just renamed with an additional .bck suffix. You can safely remove the Isposure directory.

Peter
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The presensce of the Isposure module is hardly hidden, it is covered in the FAQ's and licence agreement for the software
Almost every application out there phones home these days even if just to check whether any updates are available.

Andrew Ferguson, andrew@thinkbroadband.com
www.thinkbroadband.com - formerly known as ADSLguide.org.uk

No sorry - there is a difference between software that checks for updates and one that uses my bandwidth to collect information and then sends that data to a central collection point - along with unknown data that may, or may not, identify me as the source of that data.

That it does this is not stated *at the point of installation* and if I was not a suspicious sort and took the trouble to search for more information, I would be none the wiser about it. So no, the fact that the info is somewhere on a website somewhere on the Internet is not sufficient disclosure. I need to decide if I want to install the software when I begin to install it, not after a 15 minute search and reading on the 'net because my suspicions are aroused...

My point is that I am not given that option and that the isposure component is installed along with the rest. Adding software that sends data to a central server without notifying the user as part of another, useful, piece of software is the very *definition* of spyware.

It may well be that isposure is harmless and if I had been told what it does and exactly what data is sent to the central server and who will be given access to that data etc *before* installation, I may well have been happy to install it. As it is, the hiding of what the software does from the end user (undoubtedly so as to maximise the number of installations) has totally destroyed the reputation of thinkbroadband for me.

Just to add, we've agreed with Epitiro who run Isposure the limits of what they can do, and we control the data that goes to them from our application. The idea is we don't have to write all the testing modules ourselves and duplicate the work.

seb

Sebastien Lahtinen
Co-Founder, thinkbroadband.com
seb@thinkbroadband.com

personal blog - blog.seb.me.uk

Isposure or tbb is not even asking where to install the Isposure program, it thinks my C:/Program Files/* is the best location and does it on its own ! This is too much. Also, in the tbb install folder, there is an install program named "Isposure_300_silent_2.0.0.38.exe". the title "silent" itself gives an impression/or for sure doing something silently. tbb may be a good piece of software, but by adding Isposure, and the way it installs, anyone would lose trust on tbbmeter itself. Thanks, Shajan.

I re-installed tbbMeter yesterday and I'm fairly sure Windows Installer asked the normal question about where to install it.

However your complaint seems to be that you are not asked where to put Isposure. Do you mean you feel you should be able to install it in a different place to tbbMeter?

"This is too much". OTT?

"Anyone would lose trust in tbbMeter itself". Anyone? I haven't done. Have you?

You could just remove Isposure using Control Panel. It isn't needed for tbbMeter to run. As I understand it all it does is a small speed test once a day and upload the result to Isposure.

Or of course if you really have lost trust in tbbMeter you can just uninstall that as well.

Bob: Demon dialup >> Freeserve dialup >> BT Broadband >> Prodigynet >> Newnet >> O2 Standard.
Purple Cloud for domain, email and web space.

Thanks for your reply Roerto, I meant the same thing - Isposure did not ask where to install. I usually install all programs in my "D" drive and leave the "C" drive only for Windows. I installed tbbmeter (now removed) in my "D" drive with the Isposure going into "C" drive. In the end, the user should be made aware what Isposure does and the user given an option whether to install or not install Isposure, but before you blink, Isposure has already finished its installation.

Hope you have already read what Bob had to say about this. Well, you may trust tbbmeter and Isposure and are free to do so with any software, but with so much awareness around regarding spyware and malware, people generally ( there are exceptions ) are more careful these days. Thus gaining trust is an uphill task while losing trust is a downhill task. - Regards, Shajan.