TurboTax Users Angered at spyware in TurboTax 2003

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TurboTax Users Angered at spyware in TurboTax 2003

Greetings from The VACM Team,

In This Issue:
----------------------
- TurboTax Users Angered at spyware in TurboTax 2003 (C-Dilla)

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***************************************************
* The Bottom Line...
***************************************************
This year's TurboTax installs spyware without your knowledge and
there is no uninstaller for it. It runs full time, monitoring
everything you do with your CD burner, what you try to burn,
and sends this information back to the company. It also, as
reported by some users, disables playing of music CDs on your
PC and interferes with other software on your PC. The complete
lowdown...

Turbo Tax has secretly added spyware/Macrovision/C-Dilla to this
year's version. Most of their customers are extremely angry and
moving to H&R's TaxCut software. The spyware is not removable
and does things like disable CD burners, interfers with other
software, etc. It also has a lot of similarities to WinXP's
"phone home" and product activation scheme in WinXP. Could be
very "risky" to use this new version. Review the links below
and decide for yourself if you should be looking at H&R TaxCut
Platinum software for this year's tax preparation.

While information is still coming in about C-Dilla, it has been
reported that C-Dilla once installed is a copy-prevention system.
It makes CD copying harder, disables your ability to burn CD's,
logs all your attempted burns and logs all your downloaded files.
Word has it that it also halts your IMAPI CDROM burning service.
People have even gone as far as to state that it is a blatent
attempt by the music industry (RIAA and the MPAA) to try and
prevent the exchange of audio and video files, although this
has not yet been confirmed nor ever may be.

Here are some links to articles you can read/print regarding
Intuit's dubious decision to add C-Dilla which secretly installs
and is very difficult to remove. I know I definitely won't be
installing the new TurboTax on any of my systems this year.

NOTE: if any of the links below wrap to two lines in your
email, simply copy and paste the entire link into your
browsers address field.

First article/report about TurboTax's secretly installed spyware:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,815693,00.asp

Reader's discussions:
http://discuss.extremetech.com/n/main.asp?webtag=extremetech&nav=start&msg=24983

Check out the user comments about TurboTax at the bottom of this page:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,808676,00.asp

TaxCut review:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,808675,00.asp

Tax software comparisons and Editor's choice:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,808675,00.asp

Excerpt from Consumers Strike A Blow At Intuit/TurboTax:
http://discuss.extremetech.com/n/main.asp?webtag=extremetech&nav=start&msg=24983

Intuit is following in the footsteps of giants. Wrongheaded,
mistrustful, overcontrolling giants.

When Microsoft released Office XP and Windows XP with product
activation embedded in both products, consumers and pundits alike
responded with a gigantic hue and cry. Many Windows users were
angry and felt betrayed by Microsoft. Others were uneasy and
wondered whether product activation in Microsoft's products
was a grim harbinger of things to come in the software industry.

Well wonder no more - product activation has now made its way
into one of the most popular software programs ever created,
TurboTax. And, as an extra bonus, the latest release of TurboTax
comes with Macrovisions's obnoxious C-Dilla malware. C-Dilla
prevents you from copying the CD by disabling your CD-RW drive.

That means it's monitoring your CD writing activities all the time.
As if you needed more processes running on your machine. Early
reports from some users indicate that C-Dilla has caused interference
with other software and that it is inordinately difficult to get rid
of, perhaps requiring a low-level hard disk format. And to make
things even dicier, Intuit apparently did not overtly inform
purchasers of the new TurboTax that C-Dilla was included and would
be installed on their systems.

We published a heads-up about this recently (TurboTax Customers
Upset By DRM ) and the response from TurboTax customers was
overwhelmingly angry and negative in the discussion in the ET forum.
Intuit has sown the seeds of a mass migration from its tax software
to competitors such as TaxCut (see PC Magazine's review of TaxCut).
If you read the posts in the discussion, you'll see that many come
from longtime TurboTax users who have vowed not to purchase Intuit
products again until the spyware and activation are removed.

Anger at Intuit wasn't just apparent in the ET and PCMag forums.
The Member Reviews area on PCMag also had very negative comments
(see the TurboTax review link above and scroll down to read member
comments). And former Intuit customers aren't just posting in our
forums, they are taking their case directly to Intuit.

In my own case, I was on the verge of buying TurboTax until I caught
the review we published on PCMag and noticed the blurb about activation.
Unfortunately, we missed the C-Dilla thing, but as always, sharp-eyed
readers caught the omission and gave us a heads-up about it. When it
came time for me to buy my tax software, guess which product I picked?
You got it - TaxCut. I didn't give TurboTax a second thought. Nor will
I until product activation and spyware are completely removed from
the product.

There's a lesson here for all companies: don't put activation and
spyware into your products. Microsoft got away with it to a certain
extent because it pretty much has a monopoly (at least for the time
being). It can do certain things with impunity that other companies
simply can't get away with. Intuit is not Microsoft and it, along
with every other software company out there, had better realize that
and act accordingly. Otherwise, they had better get ready to lose
customers to their non-spyware, non-activation competition.

We all need to make our voices heard. This is no time to hang back
or be passive. We need to take a stand and boycott all products that
have activation and spyware in them. We need to contact the companies
producing these products and let them know that we won't be buying
anything from them until the spyware and activation are removed. We
also need to contact companies that aren't including activation and
spyware and let them know that we value their products and that we'll
keep supporting them by purchasing their products.

H&R Block, are you out there? Remember where your new flood of TaxCut
customers is coming from. Keep the spyware and activation out of
your products and you will keep your customers. Unlike Intuit.
---end of ExtremeTech excerpt

***************************************************
* What You Should Do
***************************************************
1. Read the articles listed above. You decide.
Our advice- look at H&R Block's TaxCut software this year.

***************************************************
* If you installed TurboTax and its SpyWare...
***************************************************
1. Install Spybot Search And Destroy. It's free, or you can make a
donation if you like. Download it from here:

http://security.kolla.de/index.php?lang=en&page=download

2. When you run SpyBot, be sure to use the built-in "Update" option
to get the latest Spyware/SpyBot removal capabilities.
[Editor's note: Ad-Aware has fallen to our #2 position on the
best Spyware removal tools list. They do not provide updates
sufficiently to remove new threats. Try SpyBot Search And
Destory, our new #1 pick.]

Best Regards,
Marc Deschenes, VACM Editor
The VACM Project at
Automated PC Solutions

*** Be sure to check out the appendix at the end of this alert
if you are having trouble booting your computer into "Safe Mode".
The process is all spelled out for you there.

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******** APPENDIX - Handy How-To Tips **********

* How To Boot into Safe Mode

Shut the computer down so that the power is off.

Turn the computer on, wait 1 second and begin pressing the F8 key
on the keyboard, once every second repeatedly. Do this until
the Windows Startup Menu appears. If you get a keyboard
error, press F1 to resume and then continue pressing the
F8 key once every second, or your PC may tell you to press another key for BIOS setup.

Select Safe Mode from the Windows Startup Menu, then press
the Enter key on the keyboard.

Windows will then boot into Safe Mode.
NOTE: This may take longer than a normal boot.

At the end of the boot process a dialog box will appear
informing you that Windows is in Safe Mode. Click OK on this dialog box.

Windows is now in Safe Mode.

If you miss hitting the F8 at the right time, Windows will boot
normally and you will not see the "Safe Mode" message. In this
case, start from the top of these instructions until you get the
boot menu screen where you can choose "Safe Mode". This can be
a little tricky the first time you do it.

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