It’s (one of) every IT manager’s nightmare: thousands of users, downloading and installing a seemingly innocent add-on program, in this case one offering to speed up their Internet experience. However, in reality, the program has the ability to compromise the most sensitive of user information, including passwords and more.

This is the situation across the country, with universities being particularly hard hit, although certainly not the only ones whose user’s data may be being compromised by a program called “MarketScore”.

Offering a “free Internet accelerator and email virus scanning”, MarketShare promises to speed up web browsing. Because it has been bundled with iMesh, a peer-to-peer program, it has found its way onto the computer systems of countless university students, with whom peer-to-peer software is extremely popular (although of course others are using it as well).

The problem is that MarketShare accomplishes these tasks, to the extent that it does (users have complained about not receiving any appreciable benefit) by… [Continued…]