Hey, shouldn't this be illegal?
I noticed that my XP machine at work was running a bit slow for a 2.4GHz computer on a LAN, so I downloaded and ran Ad-Aware. Immediately, my computer put a message on my screen that read RPC Shutdown. Thinking I had a virus, I ran our corporate scanning software, which found nothing. I then downloaded Spybot, which also gave me the same error message.
In short, after discovering my system was infected with the ShopAtHome spyware, I ended up having to use a tool to unregister the DLL file that hijacked my network communications. I was then able to remove the spyware with no problem.
What gets me is that ShopAtHome is designed to detect when an antispyware tool is running and forces the machine to shut down to prevent its removal. In my opinion, this is criminal!
--Scott
California, U.S.A.
We agree with you that this sort of behavior should not be tolerated in any civilized society, but issues surrounding the legality of spyware are still murky. There are no laws addressing whether one program can shut down another one. On the plus side, the FTC is starting to crack down harder on offending companies, so we bet you'll see some real legal progress during the next couple of years.
--Download.com editors
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