Kaspersky Labs Int. has decided to clarify the situation regarding Aureate Media (www.aureate.com), because of numerous users requests, accusing Aureate Media of adding some "Trojan horse" features to its software. Many participants of the Aureate banner network - which allows the use of software...
Kaspersky Lab Int. has decided to clarify the situation regarding Aureate Media (www.aureate.com), because of numerous users requests, accusing Aureate Media of adding some "Trojan horse" features to its software.
Many participants of the Aureate banner network - which allows the use of software for free in exchange for browsing some advertising banners, have accused Aureate Media of the unauthorised collection of confidential data from their computers (hard drive information, tracking of users surfing, stealing system registry information, and �spying' on user activity). Some components of Aureate plug-in modules were indeed collecting some user information (user name) and sending it to Aureate's web server. However, the warning notice regarding this activity has been clearly defined in the License Agreement, which is shown before the installation. There is no additional information gathered by the Aureate plug-in modules.
After extensive analysis conducted by Kaspersky Lab's anti-virus experts, we are happy to state that Aureate Media plug-in modules are not malicious because of the following reasons:
- Aureate Media clearly warns about the distribution of a user's name in the License Agreement
- Aureate Media plug-in modules do no intentional harm to a user's computer
- Aureate Media plug-in modules do not collect and transfer any information from a user's computer except as previously stated in the License Agreement
- Aureate Media does not violate the user's privacy
Because of the aforementioned, Kaspersky Lab considers that Aureate Media software poses no threat to its users.
