Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

WebHancer

18 Feb 2001

Ever heard of a product called webHancer? I hope you never do. The name implies that it enhances something about your web experience, when in reality all it’s enhacing is their wallets.

When the product is installed on your computer, it sends statistical information about your internet connection to their servers. The type of data they collect is network perfomance information like DNS lookup times, packet roundtrip times and the like. Then they sell that data to other Web sites that are interested in knowing what type of network performance their customers are getting. How does that enhance your experience? I don’t know.

So why on earth would someone install this software? The short answer is that they wouldn’t. WebHancer seems to know this, so they have enlisted the help of “distribution partners” that install the software for them. A distribution partner is a third-party software developer that gets paid by webHancer to include webHancer software in their download.

So what’s my problem with this? First of all, you are not generally told that webHancer is being installed or why it’s being installed. I’m an advocate of always informing users what you are doing. Second, In order to collect all that data from you, webHancer alters your network stack. Not a problem — until you try and remove the software. According to webHancer, if the software is removed “improperly” (whatever that means), you will lose your internet connectivity. And trust me, it happens.

I’m not sure how I got webHancer, but Friday I removed the software improperly using Ad Aware. Ad Aware removes spyware from your computer and webHancer is one of the packages it removes.

Once I removed it, my Internet connection was gone. I tried following webHancer’s instructions for fixing the problem, but to no avail. I tried the instructions from another site. Still no connection. So I tried removing and re-installing TCP/IP, but that didn’t work either. In the end, I had to completely re-install Windows 2000 to get things working again.

I don’t know what software that I installed was infected with webHancer. But I’d like to so that I could inform you what to watch out for. If you know of any software that uses this, please let me know. I’d like to start making a list to inform everyone.

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