If you have bought any music CD’s made by sony, don’t play them on your computer. If you already have, then your copmputer has been infected with a new kind of spyware. It’s called “rootkit.” Sony doesn’t think your should worry about it. Everyone else tells a different story.
This software, rootkit, makes it very very easy for someone to place files, programs and code on your system. It changes Windows itself so that it cannot detect, edit nor remove any file or directory that has a name that begins with: $sys$.
It also plces on your computer software that sends information back to sony at one of three addresses (which hackers are trying to shut down by the way).

If you have played a recently purchased music CD from sony and you do have this spyware on your computer there’s nothing you can do. the antivirus companies fixes only remocve the part that mkakes it invisible. Sony’s fix leaves windows even more vulnarable to attack then before the fix is applied and Windows fix, well this is microsoft we’re talking about here.

So what can you do? At this moment there is only one thing you can do to completely remove “rootkit”:

  1. Un-install Winows
  2. Format your main hard drive
  3. Re-install windows
  4. yes you will loose everything tyhat you didn’t back up

I’ve been saying for years that just because a big company makes it doesn’t mean it’s good. Take Windows Media Player for example. It does several things that if it was made by anyone else it would be considered spyware:

  • installs hidden files
  • has an intentionally lengthy and hard to understand liscense agreement
  • connects to the internet without your permission or knowledge even after tyou’ve told it not to
  • It sends information about your computer to microsoft without your knowledge or permission
  • It sends personally identifiying information and tracking information without warning you until you figure out the complicated method to tell it not to


The computer users of the world have a huge problem!
If the spyware is made by a large company, our security firms won’t do anything aboput it. Perhaps they are afraid of law suits, perhaps they are sharing in this information that is collected. I’m not sure why but the long term effects will destroy commerce and destroy what little trust people have in computers in general.