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HomeAccess Laptop & NetIntelligence

Friday, the 4th of June, 2010 at 12:49am

ahdkaw · Comments

I have a friend, who happens to be on benefits, is a single mother of three, and has just received a shiny new Acer laptop from the government. It comes pre-installed with Windows 7 Professional, and a ton of other ultimately worthless additional software.

Firstly, let me point out that I disagree with the idea of using taxpayers money to fund the provision of hardware and software to the unemployed, especially considering the current economic climate, but if the government insist on continuing to run a funds-haemmoraging Labour proposal, then who am I to refuse work on such systems?

After running the laptop for the first time, my client immediately began installation of her favourite software (Firefox & uTorrent) which went normally, until she attempted to visit several different websites. At this point, software called NetIntelligence blocked access to these websites.

That is not acceptable in my book or my clients, no matter who provides the hardware, there is no way that anyone should allow the government to censor the web (and god knows what else) simply because they provided the hardware and software.

I worked on disabling NetIntelligence; unfortunately attempting to uninstall simply prompted the input of an unknown password (today discovered at unlinkable_link - arseholes of the highest order). Nevertheless, the NI software was blocking access to it's own KB pages, and eventually we were left with no choice but to reinstall the OS.

Didn't take long, and now her Internet is censor-free once more.

Hey Mr. Government, don't try and censor the 'net if you haven't received permission from the owner to do so, because we IT professionals will simply destroy your install and start again.

This post was last edited on the 16th of June, 2010 at 5:19am
and has 10 comments, the last was posted by ahdkaw on Thu 5 Aug 2010 at 11:51pm

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Comments

AngusThermopile on Fri 4 Jun 2010 at 5:52am #

Do they pay for the internet access too or just the laptop?

Wonder how much it's costing to install this NetIntelligence thingy on each of these laptops. Even if it was effective it means the govt are paying for private companies to combat something they should combat themselves within the laws that exist. Something that probably doesn't need combating in the first place.

Course it won't be long before they have the ISP's acting as police for them too. Woo-f'ing-hoo.

ahdkaw on Fri 4 Jun 2010 at 8:42am #

No they don't provide the Internet connection, which is what made us both angry, they were hijacking her connection without permission.

But yes, they install all this expensive software, loaded onto an OEM Windows 7 Professional(!), and you get a ton of Microsoft Essentials software crap that I've never heard of before, so they will definitely be crap.

The government paid for this cut down shitty MS office version, when they could have installed OO for free! The just love pissing our money against the wall.

As we have been seeing VPN sales are through the roof, and how does an ISP spy on you, if you use https there is no evidence of anything, unless you can crack the decryption key, which is possible but highly illegal.

AngusThermopile on Fri 4 Jun 2010 at 10:57am #

"You have to keep your comments above the 10 character minimum, and below the 1000 character maximum."

Hard to believe what i tried to write was that long.... Hmmm

AngusThermopile on Fri 4 Jun 2010 at 11:01am #

Ah ha, I shall split it into two comments. I shall not be foiled!

If it's the windows live essentials your talking about then yes I agree.

Microsoft security essentials is supposed to be quite good though.

I'm currently trying it out to see what it's like as opposed to antivir. Seems decent enough. Low on resources and stays out of your way. I quite like it. I doubt it's detection rates are as good as Antivir's as theirs consistently seem to be up toward the top end in comparatives but I think it's likely as good as the other free options.

AngusThermopile on Fri 4 Jun 2010 at 11:03am #

I'm talking about the (proposed?) regulations where ISP's will give you 3 warning letters about your piracy then I dunno chop your balls off. Policing their customers for massive media companies.

"if you use https"

If, yes. You shouldn't need to in order to stop ISP's telling media companies what you've been up to and your average user downloading films or something doesn't use a vpn. Your isp has more info on your traffic than anyone.

I'd imagine the cost of that software they added to stop people torrenting outweights any possible saving for the media companies who assume you'll use the PC to steal from them.

They should just preinstall the laptops with linux.

Horab Fibslager on Fri 4 Jun 2010 at 1:14pm #

omg wbut what if she has a political opinion which differs from the government line?

lately the itnernet related news has just got me thinking i should read through george orwell's 1984.

ahdkaw on Sat 5 Jun 2010 at 11:55am #

Security Essentials were installed, but the "Essentials" that were listed included a lame word processor, spreadsheet, et al.

I have moved away from antivir now, the updates take too long, and the popup is just annoying after a while. I now use AVG, which is much improved on the version they had about a year or so ago.

I just think it's a disgusting and dirty game they are playing with their customers, once we start seeing disconnections, then we will see further reductions in media sales, and likely higher instances of "piracy."

Sod them, the more they moan, the more people will laugh in their faces, and be only too happy to see them losing their jobs, and having to get a job cleaning shit from our arses.

Horab Fibslager on Sun 6 Jun 2010 at 5:33pm #

i still use antivir, so used to closing that pop up ad everyday it's not a big deal and the update is done before i'm back from my morning smoke.

i heard services that encrypt your torrents are gaining a lot of popularity in the UK.

ahdkaw on Mon 7 Jun 2010 at 2:02am #

It's important to encrypt bittorrent traffic from within the client itself. I would never spend extra money on other services to allow me to use the internet as it was intended, I mean we are paying enough to the ISPs already. Maybe the media industries should have worked with ISPs a decade ago to offer their own services, but they didn't because of greed, and now their influence will wane as less and less people feed their fat bellies.

So yeah, I always use Forced Encryption, and Do Not Allow Incoming Legacy Connections. I aslo ensure that the client doesn't immediately begin downloading, instead it's better to get it into the client, view the trackers, remove them, and rely on DHT & PeX instead.

Additionally, I run PeerBlock before starting up my BT client.

ahdkaw on Thu 5 Aug 2010 at 11:51pm #

For anyone who turns up here looking for an uninstallation solution, then here it is:
http://kb.netintelligence.com/pages/How_do_I_uninstall_Netintelligence_%28Home_Access%29

Ps: The uninstall password is "unique_password" (without quotes) apparently, but don't ask me whether it works or not. If you try it and it works, please comment below (guests welcome).

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