KMPlayer, new version, comes with CoolGram ad-ware

[mikecorbeil]

Hecke and Pantuflo are users of the kmplayer.com forums and I just read the KMP thread that I quote from, below.

Hecke

#1 ... KMPlayer installs malware!?!?, Posted 1 Week Ago

I just installed the KMPlayer, but it also installed files called "CoolGram.exe" "CoolGramS.exe" in a directory called "OSTEC".

Is that malware? Did I do everything right in uninstalling it with YourUninstaller?

#2 | Link | Pantuflo

Posted 1 Week Ago

No, it doesn't. The official KMP installer comes with an option to install Ask Toolbar. I don't know what Coolgram is.

The installer contents can be extracted with tools like 7zip. In the forum there are also customized installers that have no adware.

You can trust the KMP distributions you will find in this forum.

http://www.kmplayer.com/forums/showthread.php?p=80330

The installer's contents can be extracted with 7-Zip?

I was a little surprised by that, because the downloads I just did are .exe files (see below), but I tried 7-Zip on both of these downloads and these files definitely open with 7-Zip.

Softpedia vs CNET and Pandora TV downloads:

Prior to doing a Google of the kmplayer.com website for "coolgram", I searched the website for the new version of KMP and it's available in one of the forum threads. That's the same new version as found at Softpedia, in terms of version numbering, that is.

The download file sizes, however, are considerably different. The download from Softpedia is 15,424,723 bytes, while the downloads from CNET and imgcdn.pandora.tv are both 17,290,638 bytes.

The pandora.tv download link is in the following posting for the new version of KMP and the post also provides a link for getting the download from another kmplayer.com forums page or thread, but it's definitely not in a western language, so I checked if CNET has the download and first downloaded from there; because pandora.tv doesn't seem to be a wholly orthodox website, say. CNET says the publisher is Pandora TV and that the publisher website is the forums at kmplayer.com, so I then downloaded the installer using the imgcdn.pandora.tv link.

http://www.kmplayer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16643

More from the above-quoted kmplayer forums thread:

Another of the KMP forums users, Nille, posted the following.

Nille

#3 | Link | Posted 4 Days Ago

I stumbled upon this myself (coolgram.exe) after finding out that the latest 1437 version was on the net. I tried Softpedia (first and last time) as supplier and downloaded it from Romanian server option and got CoolGram installed on my system during install (no option for not doing it). Seems like its an AdWare due to an flashtool in OSTEC folder. Its possible to terminate coolgram.exe in Processmanager and uninstall it from Program & Options in your Controlpanel.

Found it here [External URL submitted by user - Login required] and its repacked the one I've got (about 1.8MB smaller).

Usually I check this forum for the new versions but now you guys/girls posted the new version under General and not News & Announcements.

Moral of the story:

Don't download KMPlayer from Softpedia.

Closing:

I'll try to install this download, but tried to reinstall the prior version, and it won't install. The installer installs several files and then, starting with and including a file named something like URLList.txt, the installer says it can't write the files to disk. And disk space is definitely not the problem. So I tried the new version downloaded from Softpedia and the same failures happen.

I also tried to uninstall the new version of Emsisoft AntiMalware, which was installed this morning, but the uninstaller fails because the uninstaller .msg file is missing for some reason that's unknown to me. The uninstaller said to do one of two things and I forget what one was or is, but the other is to reinstall the software and this also fails.

Something odd has happened to my system today and I didn't do anything unusual; and installed softwares that [should] be non-problematic.

[Anupam]

Originally Posted by mikecorbeil

Actually, I do not see any duplicate post.

You can't, because I have deleted the duplicate post.

Originally Posted by mikecorbeil

And I just checked for the forum rules, starting from the home page of the forums, and did not find them. The FAQ seemed to be the place to look, since I saw no links for Forum Rules, but the FAQ does not appear to mention of the nature that you are talking about.

I had posted the link to Forum Rules in my earlier post. So, I think you missed it. This was my post :

Originally Posted by Anupam

mike, your post contained links to direct downloads of files. We do not allow that. Please read the forum rules carefully, if you have not read them yet.

Forum Rules

Here is the permalink of my post :

KMPlayer, new version, comes with CoolGram ad-ware

[mikecorbeil]

You're definitely right and now that I looked at your earlier post, I seem to recall having seen the linked "Forum Rules". But mentally absorbed as I was about trying to determine what this uncool CoolGram's about, and my reaction having been to naturally look through the links available at the top of these forum pages for the Forum Rules link, well, I saw the link and evidently didn't realize that it was actually hyperlinked; or was half-knocked out.