Comments on: Veoh is Malware

By: gergjn

gergjn — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 14:06:24 +0000

“Low and behold”

The phrase is ‘lo and behold’, with lo being a shortening of the word ‘look’, as in “Look and behold”.

By: pchelp

pchelp — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 22:33:36 +0000

I bumped into this page when seeking further data on the Veoh Web Player.

In its current incarnation (Aug 2010), it appears not to run a background service. But it does by default make itself a startup process and so will effectively run in the background. It creates hundreds of connections to peers and continuously sends and receives data.

Veoh does not seem to adequately disclose the nature of its client’s behaviors on its website. I was however long since aware of its P2P nature.

What came as a surprise to me was that an update apparently reasserted its startup on windows boot, where I had explicitly disabled it previously.

Annoying at the very least. I was alerted to it when I found massive unexpected traffic through one of my routers.

Veoh Web Player offers no outward indication of its online activity. It is a deceptive practice.

Veoh does offer a genuine service and I will continue to use it, but warily, and I will never fail to advise anyone I know to be using it to disable it as a startup process and to remain vigilant lest it run unasked.

By: Odo

Odo — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:40:51 +0000

BTW: The BBC iPlayer does the same thing! It runs a background process that turns your computer into P2P client/server and shares the videos you downloaded (from BBC only) to other users, that need them. Thus, reducing delays and such.
However if it would only make it clear to people it is doing it!
Many ppl would think twice before installing it!!!

I’m not installing VEOH on my computer!

Stay clean & focused!

By: lamesauce!

lamesauce! — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 23:35:51 +0000

:/ I’m having the same program as eliza (7th comment) and am wondering how to get rid of this veoh BS! Yes, I’ve gone through your steps, the service isn’t there. I uninstalled it through control panel :/ iuno, lost.

By: tony

tony — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 06:41:02 +0000

Once I installed the veoh program and ended up reinstalling windows to clear up the problems, but I found even more malicious issues when I just downloaded using real player, becauase a meta file was installed in my download location. I didn’t know what that was until then, since I did a search query on it, and it turned out that it was a ‘robot’ for the purpose of revealing ‘tags’ and other info so that a website can be identified on the net, but I wasn’t a website! This was my personal folder!!! It always took as long as watching a movie to download it. When I reinstalled windows AGAIN, and not going to veoh, all the video I downloaded took only seconds! I also unchecked all the options for receiving cookies and updates from real player. I don’t know if that makes a difference, but one must wonder why real player doesn’t allow you to save their program before installing it. Thanks for getting the word out!

By: Gareth

Gareth — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:50:57 +0000

Bradley, my article was published in 2006, and at the time AFAIK there was no such option within Veoh. As far as an unlimited plan goes, I’d be interested to know just how unlimited your plan is, as the past few months have revealed that in the wake of internet video, American ISPs are just as reluctant to provide an ‘all you can eat’ service as European ISPs.

For example – http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/27/0040220
or http://www.news.com/2100-1034_3-5079624.html

Assuming your bandwidth really is unlimited, and your ISP is comfortable with unlimited P2P traffic, then Veoh may be right for you. However, if you read my article again, you’ll notice my primary objection was not to the programs consumption of bandwidth, but to its difficulty of removal and underhand practices; which again, were evident at the time of writing.

By: Bradley

Bradley — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 01:36:10 +0000

It makes me sad how naive you all are. If you knew as much as you boast about computers you would blatantly see that upon clicking Menu, in Veoh, and going to settings you will see “Startup” and then the checkbox “Start VeohTV in the background when I turn on my PC (Allows for automatic video downloads)”.

No, they are not trying to hide it. It is OBVIOUS! There is absolutely no need to go into such detail to remove the service when a simple checkbox click would suffice. You blow things way out of proportion.

Also, I’m on an unlimited internet plan here in Florida. So is everyone I know, so don’t say there are few people who have this kind of plan without properly doing your research.

By: eliza

eliza — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:26:52 +0000

hello
since i downloaded veoh i’m facing serious probs with my connection,not only slow speeds etc,but sometimes i cannot even open some internet pages,and i almost cannot communicate through msn messenger anymore!
the prob is that i opened the system configuration utility,but veoh client doesnt appear to be there,,,

By: KiwiReader

KiwiReader — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 01:52:46 +0000

Thanks mate, i thought utorrent was dead now? I’m using BitLord currently(seems to be doing an alright job so far). Cheers for the help, i just recently upgraded my system and now won’t be installing VeohPlayer at all until information indicates otherwise. :)

By: Gareth

Gareth — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 02:25:34 +0000

Kiwi, to be honest I don’t know whether or not their are other Veoh executables running which are a bandwidth drain. My advice would be to run a bandwidth manager programme and watch the bandwidth use before and after you kill the Veoh process. Assuming the program doesn’t have any other (even more) hidden bandwidth draining processes, bandwidth use should drop significantly. All in all though, you might be best off uninstalling the bugger and replacing it with a combination of utorrent (http://www.utorrent.com/) and isohunt (http://isohunt.com/).