Thursday, March 10, 2005

Comparison of Unwanted Software Installed by P2P Programs

Benjamin Edelman, PhD candidate at Harvard, did a study of five P2P programs to characterize their license disclosures, the files they installed, the tracking objects installed and the ads launched as a result of using the software. The five programs: eDonkey, iMesh, Kazaa, LimeWire, and Morepheus. Can you imagine a 22K disclosure on 182 screens? I can't but that is what Kazaa has. Naive me was also shocked by the number of registry entries and the number of files installed. The study was noted in slashdot, and is worth reading.