If the EasyBits GO dialog is still visible, EasyBitsGO.exe is probably running. In Skype, select menu option Tools | Options | Advanced, and un-check Automatically Start Extras.In the meantime, if this happened to you as well, here’s how to fix it, at least under XP: (This does not mean that malware could not impersonate them.) Nonetheless, however they had pulled it off, what they’d done was utterly unacceptable: They’d installed a whole app with no obvious connection to Skype without any warning, much less any request for permission. I’m not a gamer and hadn’t run across them before, but they have some history, and don’t appear to be malware vendors. (I was editing an Odd Lots entry for Contra.)ĮasyBits is a real company, and they created and have been running Skype Game Channel for some years now. I did not have a browser open, and in fact was not doing anything unusual. I was using Skype at 10 AM when the dialog popped up.

Online postings just a few minutes old verified my suspicion: It had ridden in on Skype. Only after gathering that data (and taking a quick look on Google, which showed almost nothing) did I begin removing it. Last and worst of all, there were Registry keys in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER subtree under Software/EasyBits. There was a folder (dated a few minutes later) called “go” in my user tree under Application Data. There was an app listed in the Add or Remove Programs applet. I immediately did a search for EasyBitsGo.exe on my system, and found the executable at Documents and Settings/All Users/Application Data/Easybits GO/ There are several subfolders as well. And the dialog had a blatant misspelling on it. Worse, there was an icon on my desktop that hadn’t been there a few minutes before. I brought up Windows Task Manager, and sure as hell, there was a process running called easybitsgo.exe.

I’d never heard of EasyBits Go and certainly hadn’t installed it on my system. I’ve been around for awhile and I’m not stupid.

My reaction is the one everyone should have in response to things like this: Don’t click. This morning at 9:59 AM local time, a dialog from an unknown app popped up and asked me if it could install Adobe’s Flash player.

Easybits software