uTorrent, one of the best known torrent clients across many platforms, was recently hit with a lot of bad press, as the tool was discovered to have been bundled with a Bitcoin mining application, installed silently and without making it clear to the user what they are getting on their systems.
As a result, many users were reporting that their processors were being utilized 100% of the time, leading to overheating and other similar problems. Worst of all, according to many reports, the miner was made very difficult to uninstall on purpose, leaving many users stuck with it. Naturally, the incident was followed by a lot of backlash from Internet communities, with many people completely swearing off of ever using uTorrent again. An update was released shortly after which featured a new installation package, one that no longer tried to get the miner installed on users’ computers.
The damage was already done however, as the fiasco is all over the Web and dominates discussions about uTorrent. It’s hard to get to the download page of the tool without reading numerous news articles about the disaster. And the company apparently realizes how much they’ve messed up, as they have recently released a statement about the situation, apologizing for undermining trust in their application, and reassuring users that they will never get the Bitcoin miner installed on their machines forcefully again.
They also reminded their users that the company has no control over mirrors of the tool hosted on other websites, and while they have removed the offending installation bundle from their official website, users should be careful when downloading uTorrent from elsewhere.
The company also stated that they had no malicious intent in the whole situation, and didn’t want their users to be affected in such a negative way. Of course, it’s to be expected that they aren’t going to admit anything even if they were behind the whole problem.
This just goes to show how fragile the popularity of big tools like this is. Just because uTorrent is the best known application in this market, this doesn’t mean its users are going to put up with anything the developers decide to do. Quite on the contrary, the program is under even more scrutiny than any he average app, and users are always on the lookout for any potential problems.
Alternative torrent clients have started to gain popularity since the incident, and while uTorrent might be trying hard to gain back their position, their situation has become very difficult. According to experts, we might even see a new client rising to prominence soon enough. The open source scene in particular seems to have a lot to offer to those looking for a change.