Being a frequent shopper on the Internet I "bit" on an offer from
http:/www.ebates.com. They offer a rebated from merchants if you go through
ebates.com to get to the merchants site. I made the mistake of assuming that
Buy.com and BarnesandNoble.com would not associate themselves with anything
illegitimate. That was a mistake.
I read ebates.com's privacy policy and the only thing it mentions is
cookies, not a word about any other type of tracking software.
My second mistake was that I had enable Java in Internet Explorer while
trying to solve some problems and had failed to disable it later.
I signed up for their service. Later that same day, after I had rebooted my
computer I found that a program named "Javarun.exe" was trying to access the
Internet and was also trying to act as a server for the Internet.
Fortunately, the firewall caught it and stopped it.
Upon investigation, I found that ebates had installed a new folder named
"C:\Program Files\topmoxie" that included the Javarun.exe program. There was
also a file named "einstall.txt" in the C: directory that shows the
installation of 134 ".class", ",dll", etc. files.
Fortunately I had backed up my registry earlier in the day and was able to
restore it to a point before I signed up with ebates. I am waiting for a
reply from Buy.com and BarnesandNoble.com regarding my complaints to them
for being associated with such an illegitimate operation as this.
Bill Tolle, 245 S. Peachtree St., Jasper, Texas 75951
1-866-378-8525 - (409) 384-9094 http://ExclusiveBuyersAgents.com [Bill Tolle via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 49]
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