Turbo Tax 2003 년 버전을 구입해서 택스 리턴 신청 하시려는 분들은

아래글 꼭 읽어보세요.

대략 요약하면 터보택스 인스톨시 유저 모르게 spyware가 설치된다고

하네요. 아마 터보택스의 불법카피를 막아보자는 심산인데 이것이

여러 피씨 사용시 문제점을 일으킨다는 피해사례가 올라오고 있다고 합니다.

터보택스 구입하기전 신중히 생각을 해야할거 같네요.

I am not sure how many of you do your own taxes, but here is a warning I found while preparing to do mine this year

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* The Bottom Line…

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This year’s TurboTax installs spyware without your knowledge and

there is no uninstaller for it. It runs full time, monitoring

everything you do with your CD burner, what you try to burn,

and sends this information back to the company. It also, as

reported by some users, disables playing of music CDs on your

PC and interferes with other software on your PC. The complete

lowdown…

Turbo Tax has secretly added spyware/Macrovision/C-Dilla to this

year’s version. Most of their customers are extremely angry and

moving to H&R’s TaxCut software. The spyware is not removable

and does things like disable CD burners, interfers with other

software, etc. It also has a lot of similarities to WinXP’s

"phone home" and product activation scheme in WinXP. Could be

very "risky" to use this new version. Review the links below

and decide for yourself if you should be looking at H&R TaxCut

Platinum software for this year’s tax preparation.

While information is still coming in about C-Dilla, it has been

reported that C-Dilla once installed is a copy-prevention system.

It makes CD copying harder, disables your ability to burn CD’s,

logs all your attempted burns and logs all your downloaded files.

Word has it that it also halts your IMAPI CDROM burning service.

People have even gone as far as to state that it is a blatent

attempt by the music industry (RIAA and the MPAA) to try and

prevent the exchange of audio and video files, although this

has not yet been confirmed nor ever may be.

Here are some links to articles you can read/print regarding

Intuit’s dubious decision to add C-Dilla which secretly installs

and is very difficult to remove. I know I definitely won’t be

installing the new TurboTax on any of my systems this year.

NOTE: if any of the links below wrap to two lines in your

email, simply copy and paste the entire link into your

browsers address field.

First article/report about TurboTax’s secretly installed spyware:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,815693,00.asp

Reader’s discussions:

http://discuss.extremetech.com/n/main.asp?webtag=extremetech&nav=start&msg=24983

Check out the user comments about TurboTax at the bottom of this page:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,808676,00.asp

TaxCut review:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,808675,00.asp

Tax software comparisons and Editor’s choice:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,808675,00.asp

Excerpt from Consumers Strike A Blow At Intuit/TurboTax:

http://discuss.extremetech.com/n/main.asp?webtag=extremetech&nav=start&msg=24983

Intuit is following in the footsteps of giants. Wrongheaded,

mistrustful, overcontrolling giants.

When Microsoft released Office XP and Windows XP with product

activation embedded in both products, consumers and pundits alike

responded with a gigantic hue and cry. Many Windows users were

angry and felt betrayed by Microsoft. Others were uneasy and

wondered whether product activation in Microsoft’s products

was a grim harbinger of things to come in the software industry.

Well wonder no more – product activation has now made its way

into one of the most popular software programs ever created,

TurboTax. And, as an extra bonus, the latest release of TurboTax

comes with Macrovisions’s obnoxious C-Dilla malware. C-Dilla

prevents you from copying the CD by disabling your CD-RW drive.

That means it’s monitoring your CD writing activities all the time.

As if you needed more processes running on your machine. Early

reports from some users indicate that C-Dilla has caused interference

with other software and that it is inordinately difficult to get rid

of, perhaps requiring a low-level hard disk format. And to make

things even dicier, Intuit apparently did not overtly inform

purchasers of the new TurboTax that C-Dilla was included and would

be installed on their systems.

We published a heads-up about this recently (TurboTax Customers

Upset By DRM ) and the response from TurboTax customers was

overwhelmingly angry and negative in the discussion in the ET forum.

Intuit has sown the seeds of a mass migration from its tax software

to competitors such as TaxCut (see PC Magazine’s review of TaxCut).

If you read the posts in the discussion, you’ll see that many come

from longtime TurboTax users who have vowed not to purchase Intuit

products again until the spyware and activation are removed.

Anger at Intuit wasn’t just apparent in the ET and PCMag forums.

The Member Reviews area on PCMag also had very negative comments

(see the TurboTax review link above and scroll down to read member

comments). And former Intuit customers aren’t just posting in our

forums, they are taking their case directly to Intuit.

In my own case, I was on the verge of buying TurboTax until I caught

the review we published on PCMag and noticed the blurb about activation.

Unfortunately, we missed the C-Dilla thing, but as always, sharp-eyed

readers caught the omission and gave us a heads-up about it. When it

came time for me to buy my tax software, guess which product I picked?

You got it – TaxCut. I didn’t give TurboTax a second thought. Nor will

I until product activation and spyware are completely removed from

the product.

There’s a lesson here for all companies: don’t put activation and

spyware into your products. Microsoft got away with it to a certain

extent because it pretty much has a monopoly (at least for the time

being). It can do certain things with impunity that other companies

simply can’t get away with. Intuit is not Microsoft and it, along

with every other software company out there, had better realize that

and act accordingly. Otherwise, they had better get ready to lose

customers to their non-spyware, non-activation competition.

We all need to make our voices heard. This is no time to hang back

or be passive. We need to take a stand and boycott all products that

have activation and spyware in them. We need to contact the companies

producing these products and let them know that we won’t be buying

anything from them until the spyware and activation are removed. We

also need to contact companies that aren’t including activation and

spyware and let them know that we value their products and that we’ll

keep supporting them by purchasing their products.

H&R Block, are you out there? Remember where your new flood of TaxCut

customers is coming from. Keep the spyware and activation out of

your products and you will keep your customers. Unlike Intuit.