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Characteristics

McAfee(R) AVERT(tm) recognizes that this program may have legitimate uses in contexts where an authorized administrator has knowingly installed this application. If you agreed to a license agreement for this, or another bundled application, you may have legal obligations with regard to removing this software, or using the host application without this software. Please contact the software vendor for further information.

See http://vil.nai.com/vil/DATReadme.asp for a list of Program detections added to the DATs.

See http://vil.nai.com/vil/pups/configuration.htm for information about how to enable, disable, and exclude detection of legitimately installed programs.

This is not a virus or a Trojan. This application automatically compare prices side-by-side with the web's most popular travel sites

Installation:

This adware application used to come bundled or integrated with other programs like Grokster 1.6, Imesh etc, which has been stopped now.

SbCIe02a.dll is installed as Browser Helper Object.

Browser Helper Objects are executable files that are loaded when the browser is launched. They can perform various tasks, such as generating extra pop-up ads, monitoring page navigation, etc.

While installation it sends the type, version, and configuration of Web browser and type of Operating System of user's computer.

Part of its Privacy policy reads as

“IP Addresses and Computer Information
If you access and use the Service, our Web server logs typical information, including:

• The URL of the page requested

• The time and date of the request

• The type, version, and configuration of Web browser being used

• The type of Operating System being used

• The URL of the site where you clicked on a link to get to the SideStep Web site. This URL might contain a code to help identify the specific advertisement clicked on.

• The IP address to which a copy of the page you requested is to be sent for display by your browser”

It monitors URL's and compares them with a locally stored URL database in registry. When matched it gets information by sending matched URL to its server and displays ads to the left of the browser window.

The following icon appears on desktop, Start Menu, Favorites Menu and
Start Menu\Programs\Sidestep once the adware application is installed.



The following Registry keys are added:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SideStep
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SideStep\LastStart
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SideStep\URL List
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SideStep\URL List2
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SideStep\URL List3

This adware application adds the SideStep search companion to Internet Explorer and displays advertisements.

Removal

Aliases

Aliases

N/A