Kazaa and FastTrack were originally created and developed by Estonian programmers from BlueMoon Interactive[3] including Jaan Tallinn and sold to Swedish entrepreneur Niklas Zennström and Danish programmer Janus Friis (who were later to create Skype and later still Joost and Rdio). Kazaa was introduced by the Dutch company Consumer Empowerment in March 2001, near the end of the first generation of P2P networks typified by the shutdown of Napster in July 2001. Skype itself was based on Kazaa’s P2P backend, which allowed users to make a call by directly connecting them with each other.[4]
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In 2006 StopBadware.org identified Kazaa as a spyware application.[19] They identified the following components:
Cydoor (spyware): Collects information on the PC’s surfing habits and passes it on to Cydoor Desktop Media.
B3D (adware): An add-on which causes advertising popups if the PC accesses a website which triggers the B3D code.
Altnet (adware): A distribution network for paid “gold” files.
The Best Offers (adware): Tracks user’s browsing habits and internet usage to display advertisements similar to their interests.
InstaFinder (hijacker): Redirects URL typing errors to InstaFinder’s web page instead of the standard search page.
TopSearch (adware): Displays paid songs and media related to a Kazaa search.
RX Toolbar (spyware): The toolbar monitors all sites visited with Microsoft Internet Explorer and provides links to competitors’ websites.
New.net (hijacker): A browser plugin that allowed users to access several of its own unofficial Top Level Domain names, e.g., .chat and .shop. The main purpose of this was to sell domain names such as www.record.shop which is actually www.record.shop.new.net (ICANN did not allow third-party registration of generic top level domains until 2012).
This was specifically why I was avoiding Skype 20+ years ago. They were sketchy as fuhhhhhhh
You sure? Quoth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa:
This was specifically why I was avoiding Skype 20+ years ago. They were sketchy as fuhhhhhhh