I’ve been tinkering with my PC security today (installing Zone Alarm and the like), and during this I noticed an odd program trying to access the internet when I’m connected.
The program is called tsadbot.exe (the path is along the lines of AdGateway/TimeSink, and a quick web search dug up some unwelcome information on it. Apparently, it’s a piece of software that loads, displays and rotates ad banners on certain shareware and freeware programs (e.g. PKUnZip, CamUnZip). The company that makes it claims that by reading the license agreement for the download you wanted you also agree to install this piece of ad software.
Now I don’t know if it’s sending my details out when it connects to get new ads, but I’m not happy about this. I’ve deleted all of the registry entries I can find associated with it, and I’ve deleted the .exe file.
Is this enough to disable this, or is there any more I can do?