Quoth Jay T. Blocksom <usenet01+SPAMBLOCK@appropriate-tech.net>:

>Several years ago, Real Networks was *the* first so-called "mainstream"
>company to jump into the privacy-invasion business (in the guise of
>"marketing demographics") with both feet. They have NOT reformed since
>then. They are utter slimeballs (and big-time spammers -- but that's sort'a

Hi Jay, I agree that Real are scumbags and that they are not going to
stop being scumbags. But do you think both Ad-aware and Spybot are
incapable of cleaning out whatever spyware may be there, after all
this time? After all, they are constantly updating their reference
files, are they not?

Mind you, I rarely run RealOne these days, but I still have it for the
occasions when it's needed. But it still works perfectly, which means
that any spyware that was cleaned out did not disable it. As an
example of what I mean, when I ran the Oozic Player (by Creative), one
of the virus checkers (as I prefer to think of them), removed Oozic's
spyware, after which the player would no longer run - it was audio
only.

Over to the rest of the newsgroup for any opinions they may like to
offer.

Gail
c|_|

If you want to email me, use your imagination first.