…so we’re sitting there, having just installed “Joost”:http://joost.com on our main Windows computer, and we’re watching “Strangers with Candy” on the MTV channel, and then all of a sudden…
All the other computers on my network start going apeshit and telling me they’re having their ports scanned, and the originating address is the computer I’ve just installed Joost on.
Uh… Yeah. No. Nuh-uh. Fuck that shit. I uninstalled it and now I’m having to do full scans just to make sure that I’ve gotten rid of all its little processes.
Now, look — I know about Joost’s “relevant advertiser information” that it sends to companies like Viacom, Warner, and the like; I expect that shit. Companies like DirectTV already do that (it’s how you can see features like “what are other people watching” on the DirectTV service), and you _pay_ them to let them do it to you.
But the port scanning of other computers on my network? Nope — you leave the other fucking computers on my network alone. If I want you looking at them, I’ll install your fucking software _on_ them.
Port scanning is spyware-like activity, and if I wanted spyware on my computer, I’d turn off my firewalls and browse with “Internet Explorer”:http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/default.mspx, okay?
2 comments ↓
Hmm, I never noticed that in the time that I used it. Mind you, the only other computer on my network is my Mac and its firewall doesn’t really say when it blocks something. I think you have to set it up especially to do that.
Well, it was certainly interesting, to say the least — it wasn’t even just a couple of pings, either. It was a dedicated port scanning operation, going through all of my ports, top to bottom, that kept going on for as long as 10 minutes (or at least until I stopped it).
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