Fri Aug 09, 2013 12:32 pm
Had to horn in here because my bank recently started an in-your-face ad campaign asking its online banking customers to install this software--it's not a requirement, just a nuisance ad. To stop the nuisance I installed the software. Ever since, I've been having weird, hard-to-pin-down problems with Firefox21,22, & now 23 of a type and variety I have never seen before when using the browser. So I have decided to uninstall this application to see if this makes a difference--one thing that's been happening is that Firefox's url history has become all confused--such that I have to turn the history off in order to access some common sites, as otherwise, with history turned on, partial url strings from other urls are appended to the url I want to reach and I can't get anything except a 404-page not found! Until I turn history off--then the alien string is no longer appended and I can go to the url I enter into the address bar. But as you might imagine--this is not a desirable state of affairs unless you like typing in user names and passwords for common sites each time you visit them--I'm lazy and don't like doing that. Anyway--that's not all that was flaky having to do with firefox history in the last three versions (when I began using Rapport)...
I had no trouble uninstalling from Win8x64 from Add/remove, and had also noticed beforehand that I could open up task manager and end all Rapport processes with no difficulty. So I'm going to take a vacation from Rapport and see what happens--incidentally, resetting Ff did not solve the aforementioned problems, either.
Interestingly enough--Ff23 crashed at the tail-end of the Rapport uninstall--so I know the program was doing *something* relative to the browser code otherwise it should have uninstalled without affecting the browser's operational status.
Anyway--banks don't need to worry about their online customers, imo--it's the inside thieves and professional hackers that should worry them. We shall see what happens now...
Edit:OK...fingers crossed...but after I uninstalled Rapport and *rebooted*, the problems I was having with FF23 url histories seemed to have *ceased.* As in vanished. With history turned on I can now access any bookmark or manually inserted url with *no* added strings attached which would otherwise give me a 404-Page not found. I hope this is not a temporary aberration--if it should be I'll certainly get back here and report it because I don't want to cast dispersion if none is deserved. To give you another example of how weird this problem was, it got so that when I'd move the cursor over a bookmarked link (I keep them all to the left side in a vertical list), the information box attached to the cursor would not give me the info on the link the cursor was highlighting, but it provided information on a bookmark several links *above* the one I was covering with the cursor! YET...in the info box that pops up on the bottom left of the page, the correct url was given as the link that I was pointing to with my cursor! Egads, what weirdness! But that's all stopped now that Rapport has been successfully and fully uninstalled (no processes are running in ram, either.)
You might might call me irresponsible, but I have a problem with the kind of root-kittish software that parks itself between my browser and my selected urls in order to do...something...obviously other than simply monitoring--it's like Rapport is trying to "vet" the urls before it allows the browser to connect (in a way far different from smart-screen or whatever they call it, which works off a url list of "acceptable" sites somewhere.) In this process problems accrue.
That's it for now...I'll check back if anything changes with regard to Rapport. Oh...almost forgot...watch out for a FF extension (not plugin) calling itself "Selection Links" or something similar. I googled/binged that and found it was indeed a nice little bit of malware itself. I have no recollection of ever installing this FF extension (I have no extensions installed), and neither MalwareBytes or Win8 Defender AKA MSE detected it--I'm guessing because it disguises itself as a legitimate extension under FF an an add-on under IE. Get this: it not only installed as a FF 23 extension, but it *also* created an entry in add/remove programs! Solution is to uninstall the extension from the Firefox interface and then uninstall--whatever it is (it's called "selection Links" in A/R)--from add/remove programs. Weird week all around.
This is the most trouble I've had with this kind of thing in *years* and years.