What is SaveNow?

[authenticate]

Recently, I have noticed a new process running as a background task on my Win2k machine. It is called SaveNow.exe and takes up about 12Mb of memory. It is idle most of the time and takes a second or so of cpu every so often. Looking at add/remove programs I have found an entry for it there too. Can anyone tell me what this is?

 

[xWeston]

SaveNow is a program that gives you relevant offers and tells you about
other similar sites when you surf the web and allows you to take our
full WhenUShop product (if it is relevant for you). For example, if you
went to a search engine and typed in "long distance", you might get an
offer for SmartPrice - a site that we found to be the best for
comparing long distance plans. If you go to a job search site, we
might show you an offer for Hotjobs - which is right now offering great
value to users that post resumes at their site. If you go to Staples,
you might see an offer for a $30 off coupon that will save you money
when you shop there. We show these offers infrequently so as not to be
instrusive.

SaveNow protects users privacy and does not require personally
identifiable information - below is an excerpt from the privacy policy
that partners include when you download our co-bundled software.

"SaveNow offers you relevant contextual information as you surf the web
and by downloading SaveNow you give permission to SaveNow to display
relevant contextual information. In order to provide SaveNow users
with such information, SaveNow delivers content based on the URL
visited by the user. SaveNow protects users' privacy by determining
on the client side whether or not to retrieve information from
WhenU.com servers. Client-server communication takes place only on an
as-needed basis, and SaveNow does NOT transmit a full history of URLS
visited by the user to the WhenU.com servers. WhenU.com does NOT
assemble personally-identifiable profiles of SaveNow users and
personally identifiable information is not required in order to use the
SaveNow software."

SaveNow is NOT spyware - there is no persistent communication between
client and server. Users have noted that the program contacts our
servers every once in a while - it does so in order to retrieve content
from us and store that content on the client side. There is one daily
communication sent just to let us know that the client is functioning -
nothing more (ie no collection of browsing history, etc). The app
polls for the presence of new browser windows every 3 seconds - which
results in sustained (but very low) CPU usage.

Typically, data sent to client is done in very small chunks of less
than 4K - hardly noticeable. Upon installation, there will be some
bandwidth usage as the initial database is loaded - this is a one time
event. Very infrequently, there might be a sustained burst of data sent
to the client - this would only be done if we: updated the client
itself (which we do from time to time to improve performance) or
updated the entire database. Again, these are one time events - the
application does NOT use bandwidth on a sustained basis. The software
takes up only slightly more RAM than your IE browser control (it shares
RAM with it) and is designed to be non-instrusive and non-invasive.

If you do want to uninstall, you can do so through the add/remove
function in your control panel. Of course we encourage you to leave it
on so that you can benefit from the occasional offers that it shows
you. If you need more information, or experience any technical
problems, please contact us at techsupport@whenu.com. We look forward
to hearing from you.

 

[littleprince]

dang, i got the thing too... now that i noe its safe to remove....

wut the heck, xweston, u work for them?

any software that runs in the background like that, that a user doesnt noe about is... well... fishy... and deserves the boot

 

[GregANDTCH]

If I remember,
it was installed on mine when I installed "Bearshare".

 

[dugr]

yes I think u are right,.,.by the way,Bear Shares rulz!, I noticed it too after I loaded the latest ver.of BS...nad yes I have deleted it!
l8tr

 

[compudog]

xWeston definately works for them. TOO MUCH INFO! Bogus SpyWare!