For safety purposes be sure your Portable Apps come from PortableApps.com or you made them portable yourself.
I was going to comment in the topic about the site, but it appears to have been deleted. For good reason, too; it was linking to a warez site.
I got curious earlier and decided to install one of their "appz". Nothing illegal (except, possibly, for them to have redistributed). I simply downloaded a portable AdAware. I figured what the heck, PA.com doesn't offer any kind of portable malware detection, it would go good with my utilities.
I was pretty careful. After I downloaded the installer, I scanned it with AVG. AVG said the installer was clean, so I ran it. The installer was very similar to the installer on this site, except the logo stayed changed (gold instead of red) and the URL following the "Your digital life anywhere" slogan was theirs, not the one here. The installer seemed to take longer than it needed to. I scanned the directory it installed to, again with AVG, and again it reported clean. The installer offered to run AdAware Portable, so I did... and I got a splash screen, kind of like the ones here, but just the footer with the Portable Apps logo, except it was "Appz" and it was in gold. Very, very warez looking. And then... NOTHING HAPPENED.
After a couple minutes I got worried. Task Manager revealed that aawservice.exe had started. I quit, intending to restart the app - and it came back. So I stopped it again, and immediately deleted the folder. It didn't come back after that.
So I did a full scan of both my USB drive and the host computer (my personal PC at home) and they've both come back clean. But how 'bout that, their portable apps don't even work, and might even be malicious (as I suspected).
Chris Morgan, if you read this, you said in another post that you and a few people were doing things to take these sites down, but that you had to be discrete about it. I'd like to offer any help I can, if you feel you could use it. Just drop me a line - I'll double check that my email address is in my profile.
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That one is one which is goin' down.
The group is Illegal Portable Software Defense Force (IPSDF).
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
Thanks for that link, then. I've sent them a message (you? Ryan?) asking to join. I'm not familiar with Google Groups though. My wife used to use Yahoo! Groups back in the day, so I guess it's some sort of inclusive forum/CMS thing? Anyway, if they let me on, great, I'll do what I can to help; if not, at least I've warned anybody potentially interested in trying the illicit Portable "Appz" with my own story.
You used AVG alone ITS RUBBISH I have a new PC from a friend who had "upgraded" to a mac. Any way it just about had 1 of every bit of evil!
It only had "AVG" which was up to date, but since it has a upgrade for ££.££ I immediately did not like it (It was my first time I had used it.) so SpyBot was Run...
So AVG has a premium package in addition to their free offering. So what? This invalidates AVG's worth how?
They've got to make money somehow. And if sales from their suite is a means to that end, I can only see how that would be beneficial for the free antivirus utility.
Now if you've got a better one, I'll look into it, but I always hear, as far as free antivirus, it comes down to AVG and avast!. I tried avast! but I didn't like the program itself. Too much nagging IIRC. AVG is nice. It has an occasional problem with updating, where you have to do it manually, but that's the only problem I've had with it. And it's kept my system clean for a few years now.
Spybot...? You compare AVG to Spybot? There's your problem. AVG is antivirus. Spybot is anti-spyware. Personally I use Ad-Aware as it gets engine as well as definition updates, and Spybot hasn't been updated in years, only the defs.
> You compare AVG to Spybot? There's your problem. AVG is antivirus. Spybot is anti-spyware.
There's AVG's problem.
My experiences with Antivir have been positive, while those with Avast! have been very negative.
No no no no...
You downloaded ONE portable apps program from ONE other site, it dosen't work, then you go and whine about it, and label all other websites that use the paf code bad?
I have downloaded several other programs that use the paf format from multiple sites, and all have worked. Maybe its because you used a behemouth portable program, or you didn't have admin rights. And even if it was programmed to self destruct, its only ONE program.
And you say to just "create" a portable program? Do you know who goes here? Are you that narrow minded that you think everyone that comes to this site can program (or program in NSIS)? Me being a programmer, i tried NSIS, and hated it. Then i tried that portable app maker, and it failed with 4 different programs.
he's talking about sites that package and redistribute illegal software such as adobe photoshop, which is bad, violates copyright of the app and our copyright at portableapps.com
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau
I agree it is illegal according to these commercial softwares, but how is it infringing the PortableApps.com copyright? (Using the logo, etc?)
yes portableappz.blahspot.com uses a modified logo of us and other things, even repackages our apps and strips the source code from it. Hence a huge violation of JohnTHaller's Copyright and Trademark
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau
AVG's problem is that it's not an anti-spyware program? Running an anti-spyware program alone does not protect you from viruses and vice-versa in most cases; to be fully protected you should run one of each. I use AVG for anti-virus and Ad-Aware for anti-spyware. I see no problems.
Not just any site, a site which posts warez, and modified versions of apps offered here. For example they have 7-zip, but it's not linked to here, it's their own version, repackaged. Now why, I ask you, would someone take the time to disassemble the perfectly good one from this site, change it, and host it on Rapidshare or the like if they weren't putting spyware or a virus/trojan in it?
So I didn't get an app that was offered here. I also didn't get an app that was obviously illegal, like "Photoshop CS4 Portable". (Granted, they didn't have permission to redistribute Ad-Aware, but let's not split hairs on that point.) I got Ad-Aware, a freeware program.
I had admin rights. How daft was that comment? I said in the original post I was on my own machine. What else did you overlook? And as for your last comment, I have no idea what you're talking about, as I said nothing about the abilities of anybody on this site to make apps portable, aside from saying apps you make portable yourself (e.g. following instructions on portablefreeware.com) are probably OK. I'm not a programmer. I don't know NSIS. I've made a few apps portable, but they are in no way stealth programs. They're not even portable as defined by PortableApps.com; they just work on my flash drive at work. That's all.
But hey, if you think I'm still out of line, go get the Ad-Aware Portable (Zach posted the link, but he changed two characters), install it on your flash drive, and see if it works for you. Because who knows, I could have done something wrong. Maybe it's fine, but I don't trust it.