BearShare

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

Overview

Vendor Notes:

 from the website: 'BearShare 4.5.0 is the latest version of our leading file sharing program. BearShare gives you access to countless types of digital media and other files that are made available by other users plus some special professional and independent content providers. Above all, it's completely free for download!!!

BearShare is an application that allows you to share and download files with millions of other people across the globe. It is fast and easy to use with the most sophisticated file sharing technology available.'

Category:

P2P: Any peer-to-peer file swapping program, such as Audiogalaxy, Bearshare, Blubster, E-Mule, Gnucleus, Grokster, Imesh, KaZaa, KaZaa Lite, Limewire, Morpheus, Shareaza, WinMX and Xolox. In an organization, can degrade network performance and consume vast amounts of storage. May create security issues as outsiders are granted access to internal files. Often bundled with Adware or Spyware.

Similar Pests:

 P2P

Origins

Group:

 Free Peers, Inc.

Mailing Address:

 Free Peers, Inc. 300 71st Street Suite 500 Miami Beach, FL 33141 United States

Phone:

 305-865-9093 Fax -- 305-865-1878

EMail:

 Falco, Vincent vinnie@freepeers.com

URL:

 http://www.bearshare.com/

Date of Origin:

 August, 2002

Distribution

Prevalence:
  • BearShare: 0.8%
    • More Info

    Clot Factor:
  • BearShare: 47

    • The "Clot Factor" is a measure of how much a pest "gums up" a machine by adding registry entries, files, and directories. As more objects are placed in a machine, manual removal becomes more difficult and more error-prone.

    Growth:
  • BearShare: Insufficient data to report growth
    		•

    Operation

    Storage Required:
  • BearShare: at least 18537 KB
    		•

    Risks

    Privacy Issues:

    		 Perhaps. 'We will share aggregated demographic information with our partners and advertisers. This is not linked to any personal information that can identify any individual person.We may partner with another party to provide specific services. When the user signs up for these services, we will share names, or other contact information that is necessary for the third party to provide these services. These parties are not allowed to use personally identifiable information except for the purpose of providing these services.' -- http://www.bearshare.com/privacy.htm

    Privacy Policy:

    		 http://www.bearshare.com/privacy.htm

    Detection and Removal

    Automatic Removal:

    PestPatrol detects this.

    PestPatrol removes this.

    Manual Removal:

    		 Follow these steps to remove BearShare from your machine. Begin by backing up your registry and your system, and/or setting a Restore Point, to prevent trouble if you make a mistake.
    Stop Running Processes:

    Kill these running processes with Task Manager:

    Remove AutoRun Reference:

    Go To the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.
    If you find the value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\run\bearshare, delete it and reboot the machine immediately.



    Unregister DLLs:

    Unregister these DLLs with Regsvr32, then reboot:

    Clean Registry:

    Remove these registry items (if present) with RegEdit:

    Remove Files:

    Remove these files (if present) with Windows Explorer:

    Remove Directories:

    Remove these directories (if present) with Windows Explorer:

    Research

    File Analyses:

    More Info:
  • AllTheWeb, AltaVista, AOL Search, Ask Jeeves, Google, HotBot, Lycos, LookSmart, MSN, Yahoo!
    		•

    Research By:
  • PestPatrol's Pest Research Center
    		•

    Last Revised:

    		 April 15, 2005