I'm sure by now some of you have read this but...

Hold everything! They are going to use my computer for "searching the web" without explicitly asking for my permission? What exactly are they indexing, and how do I know they aren't accessing something illegal with my computer? Why are they trying to hide this in the first place?

To be fair, they do give you a way to disable this absurd nonsense—though they bury the setting behind a "Support Digsby" item on the menu, with no clear description on exactly what they are doing with it. It's clear they are abusing their users, but since they technically explain it in the TOS and let you disable the feature, they weasel out of any responsibility.

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In other words, besides the many many pages of crapware they make you opt-out of during the normal install, the latest update also includes a client from Plura Processing, which is enabled by default. There's no mention of it in the installer or change log - just a brief blurb in the TOS:

15. USAGE OF COMPUTER RESOURCES.
You agree to permit the Software to use the processing power of your computer when it is idle to run downloaded algorithms (mathematical equations) and code within a process. You understand that when the Software uses your computer, it likewise uses your CPU, bandwidth, and electrical power. The Software will use your computer to solve distributed computing problems, such as but not limited to, accelerating medical research projects, analyzing the stock market, searching the web, and finding the largest known prime number. This functionality is completely optional and you may disable it at any time.

This client is a distributed computing piece, which crawls the internet.  According to a comment on Reddit most of the work their client is doing goes towards 80 Legs, which looks to mostly be about crawling, analyzing, and cataloging the internet.

What Plura Processing and 80 Legs are doing doesn't seem too bad, but the way Digsby has once again tried to sneak things onto their users' computers is despicable. When they were in a poll on Lifehacker.com for best IM client they had no problem messaging all their users about the poll and their need for votes, but even after they were caught doing this they have not added a message to their change log or installer, and I doubt they've sent out a message to the users who haven't already uninstalled their crap.


Personally, I'm hoping that Plura Processing views the mention in the TOS as insufficient and refuses payment to Digsby. The way I read their website

Plura® requires that all affiliates fully disclose and obtain permission for the utilization of such resources. This is important as we want such utilization to be completely transparent and voluntary.

makes it sound like they'd be perfectly within their rights to do so, since Digsby implemented it as an opt-out instead of opt-in.

Note that no winner has been chosen yet.
Netflix is going to evaluate the entries and also take performance into consideration before they select one or re-open the contest.

I can elaborate more on that point here if you'd like, but people over in your forum start foaming at the mouth every time someone brings the point up over there.

-Innuendo (June 16, 2009, 09:59 AM)

I only see 4 threads that mention descript.ion over there and none of them exhibit said users. In fact the most negative thing about it is that Don finds it "crap compared to tags.dat."  We've gotten in debates over there before, but usually things remain rather civil. (DP aside.)

2nd: I am not XY user and I will never be. Why should I post anything on their forum then?

-fenixproductions (June 16, 2009, 07:39 AM)

Well then it seems silly to complain that XY doesn't support it, does it not?  If the desire for such a feature is so small that no one wants to bring it up on the XY forums, how can anyone expect that feature gets implemented?  It's a bit backwards to think that Don (who is the only person behind XY) should scour the internet looking for features to implement for people who "will never be" XY users, when he already has wishes of his own and his community on his to-do list.