Re: Pando Media Booster

dwightmc · February 2014

Greetings!

As gamers ourselves, were always looking out for our players. We wanted to let you know that recent tech reports indicate that Pando Media Booster, which was shut down by Pando in August of 2013, has been hijacked and is masquerading as needing an update that actually contains a browser virus.

Take a look to see if you have Pando Media Booster installed on your computer, and if you do, we recommend that you uninstall it. You can do so via the 'Uninstall a Program' interface in your control panel (or, if youre on XP, via 'Add/Remove Programs').

Well see you in-game!

- The PWE Team

crypticbuxom · February 2014

Some of us have known that it was bad for years.

xvii013 · February 2014

Have removed it years ago as well, thanks for warning the community though

flyingfinn · February 2014

This gives me deja vu back when Cryptic(or was it Atari..) got hacked.

kallethen · February 2014

I saw an article about this on Massively.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/02/24/pando-media-booster-update-is-actually-a-browser-hijack/

The article included a link to instructions on how to remove the virus contained in the update in case you installed it:

http://www.antivirus-blog.com/removal-guides/sweet-page-removal/

chaelk · March 2014

I already removed it over a year ago, after eventually finding out where it was hiding.

stjobe · March 2014

Thanks for the heads-up.

Pando Media Booster always was a **** program, laden with "ad-ware" and hogging your Internet connection long after whatever you downloaded with it was complete.

I was forced to use it on a couple of F2P titles and it never worked well, so I've long ago purged it from my computer ("Cleanse it! Cleanse it with FIRE!").

Sad to hear it's finally taken the plunge to actual malware (as opposed to barely functioning annoy--ware), but I can't say I'm surprised.

I always wondered why any respectable company would use Pando when it was such a piece of *** - did Pando pay them to use it?

Either way, if you haven't already, follow the instructions linked and get rid of that piece of trash.

guardianettie · March 2014

I uninstalled Pando Media Booster and deleted the files, but I don't know whether I have the hijack or not. I don't think I do. I haven't seen the Sweet Page thing. How do you check whether or not your browser has been hijacked?

nepht · March 2014

Pando has always been a pile of crap now its a pile of virus crap.

jonsills · March 2014

Thankfully, I took the advice I got in these very forums back in the day, and nuked that right off my hard drive the moment it finished downloading the games. *whew*

chaelk · March 2014

kallethen wrote: »

I saw an article about this on Massively.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/02/24/pando-media-booster-update-is-actually-a-browser-hijack/

The article included a link to instructions on how to remove the virus contained in the update in case you installed it:

http://www.antivirus-blog.com/removal-guides/sweet-page-removal/

read through that first link, in the comments there are other games listed which use similar programs

beldin · March 2014

I never understood why that was even used since all we needed to install the program was just ChampionsOnline.exe and that was also what we could download before suddenly only the pando version was behind that link.

kallethen · March 2014

It was used because of the promise to use bittorrent-like peering for the game downloads. Not a bad idea. Torrents worked well for WoW, and others wanted to follow that route.

Reality was a different, of course.

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