Bad Mods

Dear eMule user,

since you have found your way to this weppage, you probably downloaded one of these harmful mods yourself. The most notorious and harmful eMule mods today are Mod 1.1, Mod 1.2 and Powermule, but also mods like Mison, Elements etc.
Please read the following documentation and decide, whether you wish to continue using that mod or return to the official eMule.

Spyware and greed of gain
• pop-up advertising
• collecting user-related data
• transferring lists containing downloads and shared files
• dubious money-making methods

These versions not only pop-up advertisement while surfing or other common usage of the computer. The Spyware also causes your OS to become unstable - mostly by replacing Windows system files. And even worse, Spyware often collects private data about your surfing habits or other private information. Such profiling is used and misused for many reasons - or just sold for cash.
Since you probably do not use eMule to download copyright protected material, at least item 3 might not be a concern to you...

Backdoors
• gaining control over your computer
• spying passwords, credit-card numbers or monitoring online-banking
• reading confidential documents or email
• deletion of files
• abusing your internet connection to harm others (e.g. DDOS)

Backdoors are loopholes which attackers try to use to gain control over a remote computer, e.g. to do some of the things listed above.

Harming the eMule-network
• adversely affecting stability
• unjustly disadvantaging other community members
• inflicting lasting harm on the network

These versions try every trick possible to get faster downloading speeds - even if this is at the expense of others.
The techniques lead to worse spreading of shared files and therefore to other users leaving the network in frustration. If enough users decide to act this selfishly and use the mods, the eMule network will be rendered useless - this, of course, would be to no one's use.
If you chose to participate in this large eMule-community, please show some sense of responsibility and fair-play. A lasting stable network open to everyone is much more precious than the advantage of the individual.

Violation of the GPL-license
• developement of eMule is hindered
• other people's ideas are being stolen
• information is being retained

The idea of the GPL-license is to share knowledge for free. The eMule-source code is open-source and can be used and edited by anyone, as long as these changes are then made open to the community. The eMule development has greatly benefited from this.
If a developer, in spite of this license agreement, does not release his modifications, he obviously tries to deceit so that he can do one of the harms listed above. Otherwise his scheming would leak out pretty easily.
Also, the honest developers are losing their faith in the project, if they have to watch the result of their hard work during their free time being abused by others.

We hope that our arguments have convinced you and you are not continuing to use one of these mods, but the original eMule version or one of our supported mod versions that you can find in our forum.

Greetings, your eMule Team

How to remove Mod1.2
Mod1.2 is really nasty. After a short period of time, a pop-up windows is displayed asking the user to pay 20€ or live with an extremely slowed down version of eMule. Considering that the producer of Mod1.2 stole the source of a free open-source client to gain money that way, that's pretty steep.

After uninstalling the mod the pop-up returns, even after installing the official eMule client. The mod uses a spyware-technique to corrupt several windows system files and use these to send information and to pop-up the ads. You can stop this by following these steps.

Step 1:
Quit Mod1.2. Delete all files except the folders Incoming and Temp in the installation directory.

Step 2:
The mod corrupts the Winsock dlls, that Windows needs to connect to the internet. To restore the original files, retrieve either this WinsockFix or LSPFix, disconnect from the internet and execute the downloaded fix. Reboot afterwards.

Step 3:
Locate the file rpc32vmm.dll in the C:\WINDOWS\System32 (WinXP default) or C:\WinNT\System32 (Win2k default) directory and delete it. To be completely sure, you can also remove the following registry entries by running regedit.exe and removing HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\eMule\Licence and HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\licf .

Step 4:
Download the official eMule version and install it. By pressing Alt+x you can activate the hotmenu and resume your downloads by using the Import Downloads function.

How to remove Powermule
Removing Powermule is similiar to removing Mod1.2, since the used spying techniques are almost the same.
It is very important to download all necessary files first, before fixing your system!

Step 1:
Quit Powermule and delete all files in the installation folder - you can keep the directories containing the temporary and complete download files. Later, you will be able to resume these downloads with the official client.

Step 2:
Download and install either Pestpatrol or AdAware. Scan your system and remove the spyware.

Step 3:
To fix the damaged Windows-network download either WinsockFix or LSPFix. After downloading, disconnect your internet connection and execute the downloaded fix. Reboot afterwards.

Step 4:
Download the official eMule version and install it. By pressing Alt+x you can activate the hotmenu and resume your downloads by using the Import Downloads function.

last updated: 2004-02-01 by Monk
english translation: 2004-02-13 by makaze