Security Basics mailing list archives
Re: alexa - google toolbar behaviour
From: Aaron <nite () sonic net>
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 15:35:55 -0700
Alexia is major spyware... I thought this was well known but I guess not, if you don't believe me.. I I have pcap files to prove it. When you install the google toolbar, it also tells you that it will report your information to google, or you can choose disable this feature. I know because I've installed it on friends machines before to help stop popups before IE had a pop-up blocker. Alexia will also create popups and do things it shouldn't. An easy way to tell if your system or network is infected with spyware is to look for strange DNS lookups and strange user agents. Firefox also has a user agent switcher extention that allows you to change your user agent, or make a custom one :-) -Aaron On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 11:10 +0300, Mehmet Buyukozer wrote:
Hi All Lately, I saw several webserver statistics showing exact number of browsers and operating system's that the visitors using so decided to analyze what my browsers (IE, Opera, Mozilla) are sending to webservers. I was using google toolbar and alexa toolbar addons on IE and when I checked what IE sending as User-Agent, I saw the result in below. It might seem normal that Alexa adds its print to IE's agent properties but I already disabled from "Add-on Management" . And also another thing is www.k2pdf.com has anybody idea what this comes from? Is there a way of hacking these headers from registry or somewhere else? Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; www.k2pdf.com; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Alexa Toolbar) Another thing, as I already accepted the legal issues for google toolbar as spyware, I was not expecting such a behaviour. It sends all your surf information to google. An example for this: http://toolbarqueries.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&googleip=O;130 2&ch=62317384429&iqrn=3neB&orig=0H8Hr&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&features=Rank:FVN&q= info:http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esonofnights%2Ecom%2F Regards Mehmet www.sonofnights.com
Current thread:
- alexa - google toolbar behaviour Mehmet Buyukozer (Jul 13)
- Re: alexa - google toolbar behaviour Times Enemy (Jul 18)
- RE: alexa - google toolbar behaviour Mehmet Buyukozer (Jul 18)
- what is spyware Was: alexa - google toolbar behaviour Alexander Klimov (Jul 20)
- [!! SPAM] what is spyware Was: alexa - google toolbar behaviour Alexander Klimov (Jul 29)
- RE: alexa - google toolbar behaviour Burton Strauss (Jul 20)
- RE: alexa - google toolbar behaviour Mehmet Buyukozer (Jul 18)
- Re: alexa - google toolbar behaviour Aaron (Jul 20)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: alexa - google toolbar behaviour Times Enemy (Jul 20)
- Re: alexa - google toolbar behaviour Times Enemy (Jul 18)