Windows 7: Crackle Spyware

I was never able to play any movies on crackle.com, until one day I dropped the firewall for a moment. Afterward the movies would load and play as they should. However, later the same day, my firewall alerted me to the presence of trojanbackdoor.exe...or something to that effect. After having the firewall remove it, it went back as to before, and crackle movies won't play.



Under the circumstances, I have abandoned Crackle, but since they do have a few good movies that I would like to see, I'm wondering if there is a way to do so, without leaving the back door open?

You might want to read this .. Sony's Crackle: Invisible Traffic Galore

Not sure that I understand all of that, because most of it is between Crackle and their advertisers, however since it talks about forced visits, it sounds as though they are causing viewer's computers to contact their website without them knowing about it to increase their traffic count. Maybe that is the purpose of the trojan that they plant. Whether it is or not, they can keep their trojan to themselves, even if it means doing the same with their movies.

Sony seems to take a free hand in the manner in which they do business.

Just ask all the folks that played a CD or DVD on PC a few years ago. Sony loaded software to the PC and it wasn't to play music or movies. Caused quite a ruckus. I thought there were law suits over it but can't remember. Sounds like they're back to their old ways.

Yes, that is exactly what I was thinking about. If they can do "tricks" like these, I wouldn't buy anything with the Sony name on it...I'll keep my Sony floppy drive, until it breaks, and then look for some other brand.

That was the infamous Sony DRM Rootkit Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far - Mark's Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs