Occasionally I hear someone say (or type) that they would not download RealPlayer (or other...) to save their life... Does downloading these programmes doom a person to a life of spam and advertising, or what? Are there security issues? Thanks for any feedback or opinions. d

Real Player has always had its share of spyware. In the past you could easily opt out, but REALONE makes it almost impossible to do so now. I would recommend that you go to Old Versions.Com and get Real Player 8. In its settings you can select VIEW>PREFERENCES and stop it from being listed and running at startup, do this immediately after you install the program. Opt out of cookies, and all the other offers, make sure nothing is checked. You can listen to any site that requires Real Player. The program will constantly remind you that your program is out of date and make you think you should upgrade. You either tutn off the notice for 30 days, or just ignore the upgrade request! Take care and all the best!

Thanks 1,479,588, capt. (That's a million U.S.) It happens I DO have RP 8, but have seldom used it, so I did what you suggested.. except...is there a cookies switch contained IN RP, or do you mean in the browser settings? I did the other stuff. Thanks again for your help.

If you open VIEW>PREFERENCES, cookies are listed under SUPPORT, uncheck it. Go through every item in preferences to make it work for you with no auto reporting features. Stopping the REAL PLAYER at startup is listed in START CENTER, if you do not do it immediately after installation, it will be listed in your MSCONFIG>START and you will have to disable it in both places. Then REAL PLAYER will always be listed in the startup list after it is disabled, a small annoyance.

I have the latest version of RealPlayer because the old version I had locked up Windows most of the time. The newer version is better, maybe because I opted out of the upgrades offers, webcheck-ups and the other bugs. I still had Zonealarm report RealEvent.exe wanted Internet access. I managed to disable this by starting in Safe Mode, then searching for and renaming RealEvent.exe to RealEvent.ex- I could not do it while Windows was running as an error message showed stating it was a protected file. Windows still freezes sometimes but only if I open that program.