PremierOpinion states very clearly that
“The information which is monitored and collected includes internet usage information, basic demographic information, certain hardware, software, computer configuration and application usage information about the computer on which you install PremierOpinion.”
Therefore, it must be able to look through your computer files, identify who you are, monitor your application usage, monitor your internet browsing, and send all that information to marketing companies. Any software that can do that must have administrator-level access at a minimum and must have hooks into web browsers. Thus, I’m not surprised by the application running at root level and providing a two-way communications system (the so-called “backdoor”) that runs in the background.
I definitely wouldn’t install PremiumOpinion, but Intego has provided no evidence that the application can be installed without the user explicitly allowing it. No anti-malware software is needed to avoid this nasty market-ware app.
This was posted by Gregory Tetrault on MacInTouch Reader Reports today, June 3, 2010.
UPDATE:
The great utility Cocktail has just been updated to 4.62 and is supposed to clear out this trojan ‘OpinionSpy’ and others. Interesting that the big MacScan trojan scanner hasn’t had updates yet. 06.05.10
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
