Another nasty Kazaa surprise revealed

[TankGirl]

The New.net software bundled lately with iMesh, BearShare, Kazaa, and Grokster was supposed to be 'just' run-of-the-mill spyware - but it has unfortunately turned out to be more than that. As ZDNet News reports:

The software in question is designed recognize domain names hosted by New.net, and add a .new.net suffix, so that non-partner ISPs can direct them to the appropriate IP address (for example, book.shop would be modified to book.shop.new.net).

New.net CEO David Hernand told ZDNet Australia that such affiliate partners (=Kazaa and other FastTrack-based p2p clients) were paid to distribute software which would allow end users access to the New.net domains, and accounted for about half of its 100 million subscribers.

Connectivity problems after installing Kazaa? Read this:

Concerns were raised by ISPs in Australia when their users began having difficulty accessing mail servers after inadvertently downloading the New.net software along with the P2P program Kazaa.

An ISP helpdesk employee claimed it was spending significant resources helping customers remove the New.net software. He alleged the software had been made deliberately difficult to remove, and included a flawed automatic update function.

Despite conceding that an earlier version of the software was subject to bugs which made it difficult to remove, New.net told ZDNet Australia the problem had been corrected in subsequent versions. The company also emphasizeded that it was in no way a deliberate feature of the software.

Here are New.net's own removal instructions that they were forced to publish as too many people started to have serious problems with their software.

- tg