I had recently decided to advise people against using the so call "most popular downloader" Flashget. The reason behind has multiple security risks. I will list my findings here:
1. Flashget connects to all sort of servers in Eastern Europe, China and Russia even while its idling. Just do a netstat and you will see... To support this, just view the Flashget.exe binary and you will see a whole bunch of url and ip address inside... Whats the use of that? Really looks suspicious.
2. Flashget shareURL seems to store all the URL of things you downloaded. This mayb even be "special" download which is for you only, but once share, you know what I mean. Its a privacy issue and by default ShareURL is turned on. Although it claims that protected URL is not shared, I am not convinced how they tell which is protected.
3. Flashget transmit several online logons as plain text. This is true even for Rapidshare. By doing so, even if Flashget does not get you (I heard stories that they collect logins and passwords and people detected it was send to somewhere in china), others will because it passes through so many routes in plain. This is totally unacceptable.
4. Although Flashget claims to be totally free now, it has a bad history of installing a highly dangerous spyware in the past even when it claims its just shareware / free for personal uses then. This has really shaken the trustworthiness of the authors.
I would present the evidences and captures if necessay to support my above claims. But if you believe me, stop now. Remove Flashget and use Orbit Downloader or some others. So far, Orbit has been tested clean and works quite well. It does not have P2P for BT and emule, but it can capture video streaming like youtube etc... OK, I don't want to convert you to Orbit, you are free to choose, but you should not put Flashget as one of your choices.
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