Malware maker Conduit to acquire IncrediMail?

By | July 10, 2013
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We’ve been warning you about IncrediMail’s incredible trip on the slippery slope into the realm of malware, adware, and spyware. And we’ve taken a lot of heat for it, because several years ago we did  recommend IncrediMail when it was owned by a different company and had not yet started it’s free fall into dark side.

If any of you are using IncrediMail — or have used IncrediMail – you should read the following article. We spend hours and hours of our time removing Conduit and its ilk from people’s computer. Conduit is  malware – it’s a browser and home page hijacker, This company has made hundreds of millions of dollars making parasitical software. About 75% of the computers we repair have Conduit installed, and not a single person we’ve worked knows what it is or how it got on their computers. Yet this company, Conduit, is about to become a 1.5 billion dollar company.

Also note that Perion and IncrediMail are one and the same company. So please read all of the following article and let us know what you think.

“Israeli browser toolbar giant Conduit expected to split up and acquire Perion

According to information obtained by Geektime, Israeli toolbar giant Conduit has been trying to close a merger in what may prove to be one of the most complex acquisitions made in recent years.

Sources reveal that Conduit plans on splitting the existing $1.5 billion company into two entities, each to deal with a separate core functionality: one company will be run by Josh Wine, who currently runs the company’s toolbar division, responsible for an estimated $200-300 million of the company’s $800 million revenue…”

Read the rest of this article here.

 

17 thoughts on “Malware maker Conduit to acquire IncrediMail?

  1. Diane

    I have always thought that Incredimail was not good, even when you did recommend it for a short while, I was in no way tempted to even want to try it, I have heard far too many people who have had problems…I don’t need gimmicky things so badly that I am willing to take the risk, now I am thankful I didn’t.

    Reply
  2. Marion Davis

    the great people at Cloudeight came in and cleaned up my computer today. and yes it was full of Conduit trappings. I knew it was there but could not get rid of it by myself Cloudeight did a great job via remote assist. runs well now and frozen up half the time. They told me to be very aware of software that you down load as some of this malware is bundled up with the downloads. i believe that is how i picked it up. so thank you Cloudeight

    Reply
  3. June B

    Interesting! Where do I look to see if I have either of these programs downloaded?. If I do have them, how do I uninstall them?
    Thanks.

    Reply
  4. Ken Davis

    I have always wondered how IncrediMail earned it’s income, and if people who joined them were at risk? Well, I have just finished reading the whole article, and now, I feel quite pleased I never became tempted. Many thanks to the great team at Cloudeight and their advice. Ken

    Reply
  5. Lee Owens

    I started with IncrediMail back, when they first starting. I contribute to them, in the form of purchasing their pro version. It was not long, before, many of the things, they had included in the paid version, became, additional purchase items, everytime, they came out with a new version. I sent them, several e-mails regarding that. Anyway, had enough of their dealings, removed the entire program, from my computer. I have never regret it.

    Reply
  6. Claude Duval

    Please, tell me how I can get rid of Conduit Malware, myself?

    Reply
    1. infoave Post author

      Conduit has many variations, search scopes, search protect, Wibya and many others. The best place to start is looking in your browser under extensions or add-ons and remove any that sound suspicious (or disable them). Then check your search providers…set Google, Yahoo or Bing (whichever you like) as default, and remove anything there you see you don’t recognize (Conduit, Ask, Web Search, My WebSearch). This will not remove them from your computer, but they will stop them from loading down your browser or causing your internet experience to degrade. You can go into Control Panel/Remove programs and see if anything shows there. Ask usually has an uninstaller there, which doesn’t uninstall the toolbar in injects into your browser. Conduit has dozens of other names, but you can try looking for programs there you don’t recognized. But generally these kinds of uninstallers do not remove the toolbars in your browsers — or reset your home pages back to the ones your want, or change your search engines back to what you want. Then after you’ve done all that there will still be registry entries and programs start ups you have to deal with. You can see what’s starting up with Windows on Windows XP through Windows 7 by pressing and holding down the Windows key, then pressing the R key — type MSCONFIG in the Run dialog and press enter. When the configuration utility opens, click the Startup tab at the tim, and you willsee what is starting with Windows. In Windows 8, open Task Manager and click the start-up tab at the top.

      Reply
  7. Cindy

    Thank you to Cloudeight for everything you do for us.

    Is there any more news about Malwarebytes, or what we can replace it with?

    Reply
  8. Betsy

    After reading this, I did a search/scan and came up with
    iSyncConduit.dll..is this part of that malware?

    Thanks for all the wonderful tips you give to us..

    Reply
  9. Elaine

    I did a search too and found ‘HSS-2.53-install-anchorfree-393-conduit.exe’
    I don’t even use Hotspot Shield anymore, so i guess i can just remove it but am curious if it is related

    Reply
  10. Richard

    Thank You both for all the help you have given us/me over the years. God Bless you both.

    I ran a search of “conduit” on my C-Drive and found 336 occurrences of conduit. How do I eliminate the threat? Is there a malware program (e.g. Mallwarebytes; Esset; SuperAntispyware) to detect and eliminate it?

    Once again, God Bless you both.
    Rich

    Reply
    1. Darcy

      We can do it via our direct care service; you don’t need a full session key, you can use a malware removal key. They are on sale this week for $25. if you get our newsletter. The removal takes about 30 to 45 minutes on average.

      Reply
  11. Marian Fern

    Many years ago a friend’s computer kept seizing up, and I found Incredimail installed on there. I managed to remove it, with some difficulty I might add, and after that her machine ran well. In those days the hard drives were far smaller, so the problems showed up early. I can only imagine that with the larger hard drives of today it takes longer, but the damage is also far larger.

    Reply
  12. Kurt

    Hi Infoafe,

    So I had Incredimail installed around 2008-2009 and was wondering, and many seem to consider it bad news now, but I can’t find what was so bad about it.

    I read that it showed us ads. Was it monitoring our search history? Like stealing internet history files and things like that? I read Perions current privacy policy, and they do now, but was it like that before the merge? I don’t feel like they always did this. but maybe I am wrong.

    Anything you can tell me about their privacy blunders regarding internet browsing or the like would be much anticipated.

    Reply
    1. infoave Post author

      IncrediMail has, in the past, installed PUPS and malware. It has in the past, been a browser hijacker. The company that owns IncrediMail is close to bankruptcy – if you trust them, that’s fine. We do not and we’re usually pretty good about predicting where things are going to end up. In the end, we all have to decide what we will allow on our computers.

      Reply
  13. Annie

    Hey, I had a question about Incredimail I was hoping you could help me with! It’s hard to find people who know about this now.

    1. Did Incredimail track users internet browser history before its merger with Conduit? I know conduit is the browser hijacker company, so I wonder if that’s when they got involved with that?

    Reply
    1. infoave Post author

      Don’t know the answer. IncrediMail was not known for keeping its users’ info private. IncrediMail was a HUGE advertising tool.

      Reply

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