Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   promytius
   Member

   I run AVG suite, PCTools firewall and Ashampoo's Anti-Malware and all reported these screensavers as malware, leaving tracking cookies with a alert value of HIGH. I uninstalled them, but they left behind lots of registry keys and even left the application that connects to the internet installed in a user/applications directory that could still run the complete program, even when Revo Uninstall had reported all vestiges of the program uninstalled! Their own uninstall program hardly uninstalled anything. My firewall kept going off warning me about suspicious activity from these programs as well.
   IMHO one should steer clear of these programs.

   Posted 15 years ago #
2. 

   Whiterabbit-uk
   Games Guru

   Thanks for the info promytius, but I've had Gemini Screensavers running on all of my computers for years and have never had a problem with any of them.

   The giveaway team have given away many of these screensavers over the years that the project started (Oct 2006). They always test the programs throughly and would never knowingly put up any program that was full of malware. Also there have been thousands of downloads of these screensavers and I can't recall anyone else complaining of such problems.

   Posted 15 years ago #
3. 

   RosnSC
   Member

   I agree with you, WR.

   Posted 15 years ago #
4. 

   Deserthead47
   Member

   Possibly a conflict between your AV programs,best sticking to only one per pc.

   Posted 15 years ago #
5. 

   promytius
   Member

   I consider any program that plants a tracking cookie on my PC without asking or explicitly telling me to be malware; I also consider any program that fails to uninstall itself to be malware. I also consider any program that HIDES itself to be malware - if you uninstall the manager program it has a second copy in your user/doc files! If you've had them installed for years then you've been supplying them with info without your knowledge or consent.
   This was not a conflict between AV programs - one is a firewall, one is AVG suite for anti-virus, and one is an anti-malware program - all completely different in function and focus, and all did not like the programs. PLEASE feel free to infect your own PCs with as much malware as you desire; I desire not to have any. Thanks for your comments!

   Posted 15 years ago #
6. 

   RosnSC
   Member

   promytius, we all have to make choices about what we do/don't allow on our computers, whether it's a game, or screensaver. What works well for some may not for others. I am finding that for my particular computer, which is several years old now, the cooling fan runs faster when the screensavers are activated, and slower (normal) when deactivated. It does that no matter which brand of screensaver I run on it. Therefore I have chosen, for now anyway, the generic Windows XP screensaver. Copmom did give me the idea of using home-taken photos as screensavers, though. We always use those for our backgrounds.

   Posted 15 years ago #
7. 

   Deserthead47
   Member

   You're entitled to think what you want,but Ashampoo Anti-Malware also contains an AV scanner as well as an Anti-Spyware module,I had a minor problems with false positives when I first started using it,no problems since removing my previous AV program.

   http://www.ashampoo.com/uk/gbp/pde/0249/Security_Software/Ashampoo-Anti-Malware

   Posted 15 years ago #
8. 

   promytius
   Member

   Interesting, and thanks for the info - I will confer with Ashampoo for advice on running the two programs concurrently. Do you feel the same way about Sunday's screensaver offer where a user has reported a worm inside of it? Do you think that is also a false positive?

   Also RosnSC, do you have an LCD monitor? I'm told they don't really need a screensaver anyway, just a cosmetic thing now. If your fans run faster then something is using your CPU for sure; better, as you say, to just use a nice picture for wallpaper; you can always put your desktop icons in the toolbar as a pop-up or just turn them off and enjoy your images on screen.

   Posted 15 years ago #
9. 

   Deserthead47
   Member

   I never tried the program on Sunday, so I can't really comment on it,but usually when a screensaver is given away on the site there is at least one report of viruses/worms etc,usually a false positive.Again it comes down to who and what individuals trust,one AV program flags up a problem whereas 20 don't.

   As we are on about screensavers,here's a link to some interesting ones(all updated for win 7)that appears on the forums from time to time.

   http://www.reallyslick.com/

   As usual I can't find the original thread.

   Posted 15 years ago #
10. 

    promytius
    Member

    FOLLOW-UP -
    Well it is STILL showing up on my PC,after being "removed" over a week ago! I just deleted yet another icon to their screensaver manager! That is after running the deepest removal REVO Uninstaller can run! This program is like the cat that came back - you just can't get rid of it. To the user who has run it for years, now that they have 2 years of your pc activity, I'm sure they are better marketers, as they dropped several tracking cookies into my internet temp files sub-dirs. They remind me of the ASK toolbar or the old AOL-we're-never-going-away leftovers.
    I'm just saying...

    Posted 15 years ago #

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