Flashplayer bug noticed by others, PM issue.

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I have been trying to stop Flashplayer from
trying to make folders on my machine which
collect data and send it to Google via YTIMG.COM
and have had some success, with outside
help from very smart people who had to see it
happen before they stopped calling me delusional.
I am not the only person who has independently
noticed the problem, but have surprised a lot of
people by asking them how to prevent it.
It seems to be more significant on WP than other
sites I use, except Youtube and Facebook.

This problem has the symptom of frequent slowing down
machines that are not very fast anyway, and
simultaneous appearance of unwanted Flashplayer
and Flashplayer - related files.

Another user told me about similar symptoms on WP
which I will list briefly as I have temporarily disabled
copy and paste incidentally or accidentally:

"WP bug...slows down W98....almost to a lock-up...
click on a message...hourglass agoes up for a minute
before the page loads sometimes...cursor strangely
disappear. intermittently...according to Norton* nothing
virus-wise is happening...it seems to be spyware which
is trying to load...spybot is blocking...causes the drastic
slowdown...on WP.
I can tell something is happening because both my modem
light and hard drive light flash a lot more on WP.
Alex needs to wake up and investigate this."
-Another WP user, manually retyped in fewer words.

I am concerned about "my virtually equivalent experience
in Linux (obviously the Hard Drive and Norton are not
present on my VM "sandboxed?" browser.) And also
concerned about this phenomenon interfering with PM
which WP TOS says is private between users, and although
external packet sniffing is a given in some countries at
least as a known matter of fact, the Linux hacks occur
via an encrypted datastream. One way to STOP them is
to kill SSL, but that causes an error message to
respond to before every single page on WP will load
otherwise perfectly. This happens even if WP is the only
URL accepted, which means WP is "apparently" enabling
the Flashplayer intrusion, I assume unintentionally.
Another user points to the social network widgets on WP
as the source of the encrypted Flashplayer spyware,
which agrees with my knowledge of it on Youtube
and Facebook.

The user I quoted is no computer expert but described
accurately a common symptom of the spyware intrusion
that happens here on WP even with more than reasonable blocking software.

I am certainly not the only person with knowledge of and
working against the spyware, and I am only requesting that
it be removed from WP or a clear public explanation of why
it cannot be, with a simple way to stop its intrusion.

(Long string removed - M.)

??????????????????????? viroboxen entropic

four years ago I had Windows 98 and every night at 10PM (2 AM EST) when WP backed up the server WP ground to a halt for about an hour. Later I had a computer hardware and software upgrade to Win XP and it didn't do that any more. I don't know if WP has any expectations to be backwards compatible, if that is what you are saying.

ytimg.com is owned by youtube. It is where it host most of its images. You may need it to run view youtube videos.

There are plenty of you tube videos embedded in post on this site. It is not WPs fault, it is merely a preference. If you don't want flash don't use it. If you want to block Youtube videos by all means. Data needs to be sent in order to use these, what do you expect?

It is not WPs fault. You haven't noticed anything of major concern other than the fact that flash is known to crash a machines and browsers. if you have a particularity old version of Flash then upgrade it or do a full uninstall. Download their removal utility if necessary.

if you want to know how to block elements i (such as <embed> or <object>) or scripting I can help you with that.

My machine is set up to NOT HAVE FLASH.
It installs hidden files which I set the GUI settings to make visible.
When there is no video and everything is blocked except WP,
FLASH installs hidden files ("hidden" flag set) to hide the fact that it is installing,
but became noticeable because the ONLY TIME the computer slows down is
when FLASH gets installed in a sneaky way on WP.

I am getting annoyed at knowing about this and asking why Flash vigorously
installs on WP (also Youtube and Facebook BTW) and uses Hidden Files and
does not show any icons, and goes unnoticed except in Linux where it can
be watched doing what it does. I would really like an explanation of why
FLASH is installing sneakily on machines that it is not allowed on, and why
WP is a site that allows FLASH to install itself as hidden files.

Another site ignored this question also.
-----------------------------EDIT (FINAL COMMENT)-----------------------------------
I got yelled at for making more threads about this so I deleted them including
one that included this evidence of hidden files installing while the machine slowed
down (the hidden files are visible here) :
http://www.OnAnother.Net/BADFLASH.png

Last edited by ValMikeSmith on 20 Apr 2010, 5:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

How can flash install something when it is not on your computer? I suggest you haven't got rid of it. I read there is a bug where flash uninstall silently fails. Install the latest version, make sure nothing is running then uninstall.

Wrong planet is not responsible for the client side problems. If there is a link to a third party, it is not WP uploading, it is your browser downloading.

ValMikeSmith are you able to provide steps as to exactly when browsing causes this behaviour? Which browser(s)?

I there was a security issue (which is not what springs to mind), the exploit could hide the true source of the problem. Flash is not exactly renowned for security, it is up there with IE on poor practises, however newer version are better. it could be notjhing to do with flash either merely mimic behaviour as expected.

Have you configured you browser plugins? You can turn off flash that way. I would do the clean uninstall first though.

All browsers accept this hidden flash plugin although Mozillas are what I usually use.
It gets in via encryption so firewalls can't block it. A related virus is koobface,
which is infesting face book. Google "flash virus 2010" for lots more info.

Someone gave me a script that changes their directories into imaginary disk drives
so it installs in a black hole with no memory. That's funny I think.

McAfee has caught the intrusive flash virus on a neighbors Windows PC.
Unfortunately McAfee had a serious bug in it a few days later that crashed
millions of Windows PCs shortly thereafter, but I got a screen capture from
my neighbor for "evidence" just in time (if anyone ever cares).

Its not like there's a Virus Police is there?
Especially in Linux where we are responsible for our own code.

The "flash" that intrudes is a virus because it installs hidden files without
permission, but it creates SOL supercookies like regular flash, and apparently
joins some kind of ad-hoc network (zombie botnet?) to upload personal info to.
It seems to be targeting personal info and seems to be designed for ID-theft.

I commented elsewhere about the meaning of the name of Flash Shockwave.
I thought of another one: Adobe. It's a kind of brick.
People throw bricks through windows sometimes for vandalism.
Brick also means a computerized product that has permanently crashed.
I don't know why people pick stupid evil (literal meaning) names for products.

I am unable to explain the connection of this virus to WP except that it has
something to do with social network widgets. It was not here before they
were added. It has caused me to receive packets unintended for myself,
and other very confusing anomalies. But the unintentional packets seem
to be coming from many other places besides WP now. But Mozilla and
WP seem to be a very bad combination in my case atm so I will avoid
aggravating the situation for awhile until it is better understood and resolved.