AVPDOS32.exe: NOT a Pest

· Overview ·
· Origins ·
· Operation ·
· Risks ·
· Detection and Removal ·
· Research ·

Overview

Summary:

 PalTalk is an Internet audio/video chat client offering a wide range of features including free voice chat and videoconferencing. Users can communicate with other users anywhere in the world, at any time and in any mode. Up to 500 users can connect simultaneously for a group conference call. You can also create your own group and bring together other PalTalk users with similar interests. Use PalTalk to see up to three friends simultaneously with the group videoconferencing feature, or send a voice email to your buddies if they aren't online.

Vendor Notes:

 "Paltalk is the total Internet communications solution that combines the best of a instant messaging and internet telephony. Paltalk offers a wide range of features that allows users to communicate with each other anywhere in the world at any time - all for free." -- http://external.paltalk.com/

Category:

Adware: Software that displays popup/popunder ads when the primary user interface is not visible or which do not appear to be assocaited with the product.

Similar Pests:

 Adware

Origins

Vendor:

 Paltalk Software, Inc.

Mailing Address:

 Paltalk Software, Inc., 213 West 35th Street, New York, N.Y. 10001.

Phone:

 212-564-2147

EMail:

 dasch@corp.paltalk.com

URL:

 www.paltalk.com

Date of Origin:

 October, 2004

Operation

Platform:

 Windows 98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/2003

General:

 PalTalk contains third party advertising delivered and serviced by DoubleClick, which PalTalk confirms as their "Web advertising partner". Once you register with PalTalk, you will receive email solicitations from whatever companies are associated with both PalTalk, and DoubleClick. Once enrolled, you are offered the opportunity to unsubscribe from the PalTalk mailing list, but once you have been loaded onto other mailing lists you will have to unsubscribe from them too.

Additionally, communications may be monitored and any form of your communication may be found published at another site for another purpose. Additionally, you waive all rights to any personal images sent through PalTalk to another user.

Paltalk uses a combination of disk drive serial number and the physical MAC address on your NIC card to identify you.

Advertising:

 Yes. "We serve over 11 million banners and 1.5 million popups daily for Paltalk. Paltalk is used around the world and has over 5 million subscribers. If you are an advertiser looking for new and unique ways to display your ads on the internet, we offer the same technical support and dynamic solutions that made Paltalk a sucess to help solve your internet advertising needs." -- http://external.paltalk.com/

Storage Required:
  • AVPDOS32.exe: NOT a Pest: at least 53 KB
    		•

    ScreenShot:

    Risks

    Privacy Policy:

    PalTalk uses the information you provide us to inform you of new services and offerings from Paltalk and to provide you marketing and promotional offers from advertisers... We sometimes provide your information to carefully selected partners for the purpose of sending you email messages...

    Some of the ads appearing on this service are delivered to you by DoubleClick, our Web advertising partner. Information about your visit to this site, such as number of times you have viewed an ad (but not your name, address, or other personal information), is used to serve ads to you on this service.

    In the course of serving advertisements to this site, our third-party advertiser may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. [source]

    Detection and Removal

    Automatic Removal:

    PestPatrol detects this.

    PestPatrol removes this.

    Manual Removal:
    1. Set PalTalk to manual start mode.
    2. Remove pnetaware.exe from the windows/startup directory.
    3. Go to your windows control panel and select ADD/REMOVE Programs. Find and select Paltalk and click Remove.
    Stop Running Processes:

    Kill these running processes with Task Manager:

    Remove Files:

    Remove these files (if present) with Windows Explorer:

    Research

    File Analyses:

    More Info:
  • http://www.paltalk.com/paltalk2/Business/titlepage.htm
  • http://www.paltalk.com/paltalk2/Privacy.htm
  • http://www.paltalk.com/paltalk2/TOS.htm
  • AllTheWeb, AltaVista, AOL Search, Ask Jeeves, Google, HotBot, Lycos, LookSmart, MSN, Yahoo!
    		•

    Research By:
  • PestPatrol's Pest Research Center
    		•

    Last Revised:

    		 January 25, 2005