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| Thread ID: 28428 | 2002-12-19 03:53:00 | Paradise 128k Broadband | Steve Askew (119) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 107492 | 2002-12-19 20:50:00 | This is utterly disgusting, especially coming from a major company such as HP. I am starting to wonder now if the ads HP has on these pages (on the right) should be taken off the IDG servers. This probably is in violation of the Privacy Act, as it seems to be something that no one has known about. I would be surprised if it was somewhere in the licences or terms of purchase agreements (or things like those). If I had an HP computer and capped-bandwidth on Jetstream, I would right now be making crys of foul play to HP. You've done a good thing blocking all traffic from the keyboard program. If you have McAfee Firewall, you could pop the program in the list of programs denied access to internet. If you would like to get rid of those annoying big green text notifications that appear when use the keyboard functions, just kill osd.exe (it's the keyboard On Screen Display program). I really think that you should contact the following organisations: The Office of the Privacy Commissioner (http://www.privacy.org.nz) PC World (http://www.pcworld.co.nz) Consumer's Institute of New Zealand (http://www.consumer.org.nz) The New Zealand Herald (http://www.nzherald.co.nz) |
agent (30) | ||
| 107493 | 2002-12-19 20:58:00 | Its not just HP keyboards. If you have a Multimedia "Hot-Button" keyboard of ANY brand check it. I have a different brand, and I got the Netropa file also. |
Baldy (26) | ||
| 107494 | 2002-12-19 21:04:00 | Hey Baldy, Zone alarm picked it up first time during setup & from what I can gather it sounds like most Netropa keyboards phone home :-( My mate down the road changed his keyboard this moring for one off an old comp they have at home & he rang me to say it is still connecting to that IP address, So I told him to uninstall the keyboard driver & that has done the trick. I'm going to contact Paradise today to see if they can block that IP as it must be costing them a few megabytes of international traffic each day as there are thousands of these HP computers sold each year in NZ alone. I will let you's all know what they have to say. cheers Steve |
Steve Askew (119) | ||
| 107495 | 2002-12-19 23:15:00 | is there anyone here who can sniffed the packets and tell us what infomation is being sent?? | robsonde (120) | ||
| 107496 | 2002-12-20 02:29:00 | Well done Steve for finding out about that spy program. | Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 107497 | 2002-12-20 03:31:00 | I sent the following email to Paradise Net. Hi, We have had Paradise 128k Broadband for 1 week now & there is some unexplained megabyte usage. When I check my usage at paradise homepage there is always a reference to an International IP address 207.26.131.137 & the usage is Approximately 20mb per hour. It doesn't sound much but it is still using this 20mb when I'm not even at the computer. My os is win xp pro & the only progs that I'm aware of running in the background are AVG & icq,I have disabled these progs & still the 20megs disappear. A friend down the road has paradise 128k Broadband & the same HEWLETT-PACKARD computer as us but running win ME & when he checked his usage he also had the same megabyte usage to the same IP as us. So as a test I set the cable modem up on our kids Win computer & left it on the net for a few hours yesterday morning & when I had a look there was no megabytes missing to the above IP. So the next step was to install zone alarm firewall & I was shocked to find that the culprit is the HP multimedia keyboard driver. A search on google for mmkeybd.exe will give you lots more info. The Question I have is :Are you able to block access to this IP 207.26.131.137 ? I'm sure this must be costing your company a lot of Gigabytes of unnecessary international traffic as there are thousands of these HP computers sold in NZ each year. Look forward to your reply. Cheers Steve Askew Heres the reply i got from Paradise net. Hi there, Well done with your troubleshooting - I haven't heard of the MM keyboards doing this before, however most OEM computers do tend to install applications that "phone home" from time to time. >Are you able to block access to this IP 207.26.131.137 Unfortunately not - we cannot block access to certain IP addresses. I suspect what you have done is the best possible solution - a firewall will block the traffic neatly, and prevent this unnecessary traffic from using your monthly allowance. Regards Daniel Cheer TelstraClear Fault Managment Centre. I guess they don't want to know about it because they can sell me extra international traffic at 20 cents per megabyte! :-( I'm glad I'm not on one of those xtra plans that only allow 500mb per month as that would be chewed up in about 25hrs of not doing anything LOL cheers Steve |
Steve Askew (119) | ||
| 107498 | 2002-12-20 03:37:00 | The first match from google to "ans communications" is a WorldCom page ... That's the network company which "overstated" its income by $3.8billion, and is now in "Chapter 11" bankruptcy, and laying off 17000 workers. Maybe it's an income stream for them. ;-) If they get 20 MB/hr from every keyboard of this type, it must keep their fibre lit up. :D |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 107499 | 2002-12-20 03:45:00 | yes I have the damned thing too (a hp pav 8805 with 1 touch (ouch!!) keyboard) when editing my start-up the other day I found this ???programme osd which after some thought I deselected -- osd is not mentioned on the great start-up list web page www.pacs-portal.co.uk AFAIK perhaps also this critter explains some recent mysterious data activity whilst online (mostly outgoing data too) which had no logical reason - no updates of AV or windows etc, and loading of web pages was definitely not the issue either... yes just what are they monitoring - keystrokes? and is this activated by anything in particular - say registering with hp - or is it running no matter what... also which particular driver is the culprit? |
artpepper (1321) | ||
| 107500 | 2002-12-20 03:49:00 | From memory the OSD program simply puts the volume control level bars on screen briefly when you operate the control. OSD = On Screen Display? | godfather (25) | ||
| 107501 | 2002-12-20 03:58:00 | > osd is not mentioned on the great start-up list web > page It is on Pacs-Portals list: On Screen Display = OSD.EXE "By Netropa for HP and other brands. Same group as KBD MediaCenter & Touch Manager. Pressing a "hot key" on such a keyboard brings a corresponding panel on the screen for volume, etc. Nice but not required if you don't adjust things regularly - can also freeze" It was given an "X" - Definitely not required - typically viruses, spyware, adware and "resource hogs". |
Jen C (20) | ||
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