Spyware Weekly > Warning

Users of Lavasoft's Adaware and developers of anti-spyware software need to be made aware of a shocking new development.

There is a software media player being distributed which searches for and removes Adaware if it is installed. Radlight media player has been tested by several testers and by the Adaware developer himself. Radlight, which bundles with the spyware application "Savenow" and with New.Net software, makes repeated searches for the installation of Adaware and removes it if found.

~~There is no mention whatsoever during installation of this software that it will remove any other software (text of the license below)~~. This unethical and possibly illegal behavior has earned Radlight a spot on Adaware's next referencelist which is in development right now.

It turns out Radlight's newer version does contain a clause stating that Adaware's presence is in violation of the EULA and that "such programs will be removed". Below is the relevant portion of the agreement.

LICENSE AGREEMENT

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the invalid use of this software. You are not allowed to use any third party program (e.g Ad-aware) to uninstall application bundled with RadLight. Such programs will be removed. If you want to uninstall them, you may do so via Add/Remove in Windows' Control Panel.

Nicholas Stark, owner of Lavasoft and developer of Adaware has declared that "Under no circumstances can we accept that a Malware purposely removes our software."

If you have this software installed on your computer, you should check that your installation of Adaware (if you've installed it) is unmolested, then uninstall Radlight. If you find that your installation of Adaware has been interefered with, please contact me immediately at , and I will pass this along to the developer.

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In other Lavasoft news (since I'm sending a special issue out anyway), Lavasoft's support forums have changed locations. Not fifteen minutes after sending yesterday's edition, I got an email with the URL for the new location. Oh well. The new address for the Lavasoft support forums is http://www.lavasoft.nu/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi. Please update your bookmarks.