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Last posting removed (and other options for audio downloads)

November 23, 2010 By 14 Comments

I’ve received a couple of emails about my last post, which has since been removed but many people can still read on their RSS readers.

Since reviewing the program (an MP3 downloading engine) I received multiple reports on email and in the comments, which I will quote here: “it installs a search toolbar and changes your homepage on your browser [although] the toolbar can be uninstalled via control panel. It also changes your Keyword.URL string in Firefox browser to a search engine sponsored by the program”. (Thanks Derek). Since these changes were not declared up front in the installation process, I had to remove the program.

Which is too bad since it was kind of a nice app and seemed so well put together. In any case, for other, similar, MP3 downloading engines check out Songr (which downloads MP3s and lyrics), and Quisple (which finds songs on YouTube and downloads the audio). You can also check out a handful of tools that can download from music sharing sites; see here, here, here, and here).

One reason why I did not see the changes that this program made is that my main browser is a portable variant of Chrome (ChromePlus) which obviously wasn’t affected, and my IE installation, which I use for work, is the latest 64bit beta of IE9 (also not affected). I went in to check Firefox but nothing seems changed there either, not sure why. I guess I will get back to using TinyWatcher to monitor changes on my system when I test software.

I apologize if you installed the software from my last post and found unwanted home page or search changes and/or browser toolbars.


 
 
 
Samer Kurdi

Samer Kurdi

Has been reviewing software since 2006 when he started Freewaregenius.com
Samer Kurdi

@freewaregenius

November 23, 2010
Samer Kurdi
14
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  • jo

    I chose not to download it because the Web of Trust plugin for Firefox gave a big WARNING! to that page

  • ynot

    No excuse. Freewaregenius feed now canceled from my RSS feeds.

  • Transcontinental

    I hadn’t downloaded it as well, fortunately. These things happen, nice face with bad intentions, crappy software, more than too often. For finding/downloading mp3 and video embedded music files, one application I use is ‘songR’ ( http://songr.co.cc/ ), no problem, continuously updated, works great.

  • Suxima

    Thank you for admitting this little mistake – most other freeware sites / blogs won`t even bother about such bad behavior of their reviewed software. I could give some examples of poor reviews of Music Frost, but those blogs don`t deserve attention and links. Freewaregenius is outstanding because of the quality of the reviews, and because you care about your readers.

  • Toni

    The exciting thing about your site is that you often come up with original and unknown quality freeware that I haven’t seen anywhere else. Most sites come up with the same lists of well known freeware classics. But with it comes the risk that every now and then you make a mistake. Good you corrected it immediately. I didn’t even have the chance to see the post.

  • Snownbound

    No idea if there was a custom install for the app but if there was did the people who had this happen to their computer use the custom install? I have seen apps that when custom install is used allows u to bypass installation of the Ask toolbar.

  • arto65

    Thanks for this post. Just an idea; next time you decide to pull an article from the site for such reasons, is it possible to replace the review with a warning text ?
    I installed the software with all the related negative impacts, but it’s not too hard to change everything back to normal. Iritating though.
    Thanks for this site by the way, it’s a true goldmine!

  • Ed

    Hi
    You should leave the name of the offending program so that others are warned and can avoid it.
    Thanks

  • Alex

    Remove this blog entry… won’t do you any good. Another “cool software blog” happened the same. Their recommend software installed crapware. I reported it and they just removed the blog entry. No “excuse us for this error” BS…

  • http://www.danielwoolnough.me.uk/ Daniel Woolnough

    Like Jo, I didnt install due to WOT giving the website a bad rating. Thanks to firefox.

    • Samer

      @ Suxima, Toni, and others: thanks for your kind words

      @ Jo, Daniel: I just re-installed WOT myself, hopefully it can help me avoid this sort of situation in the future.

      @ Ed: the offending program is called MusicFrost

      If those guys would only declare the changes up from in the installer, with the option to uncheck and prevent them from happening they would have no problem. A very bad decision for them not to do so. Too bad.

  • http://carbonize.co.uk Carbonize

    Trouble with WOT is it relies on people’s input and to often I have seen sites marked as malware when they don’t even have any downloads.

  • Toni

    Yes I agree about WOT, it shows sites as untrustable which I think are not, and vice versa. I installed it a long time ago, because I think the cure can be worse than the cause. Let’s not get to paranoid about some spyware or toolbar.

  • bigjohnny

    the offending program, did not cause any funny business when I used universal extractor to get at it. I took a look at where it is searching and the program logs in to vk.com (a facebook clone) and just searches for music on that site. http://vk.com/gsearch.php?section=audio&name=1&q=SEARCH TERMS If you sign up for free at that site than you can see the music there and just need to use a media downloader program to save it