Shoutbox

This page is full of crap! I tried to contact the author, but couldn't find any contact information... (I wonder why )

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From http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/data/messenger_plus.htm
POTENTIAL SECURITY AND PRIVACY RISK

Archived conversations and the 'show contact on desktop' options cause contact names and email addresses to be stored in the Windows Registry in readable format under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Patchou for the current user, and HKEY_Users/S-I-5-****/Software/Patchou.  If you do NOT want other computer users to know who you are talking to when using Messenger, or which contacts you have displayed on your desktop, do not use Messenger Plus!!

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OK, it's true that Plus stores e-mail addresses and only custom names -not "contact names" as stated above- unencrypted in the following registry keys:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Patchou\MsgPlus2\<user>\Archive
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Patchou\MsgPlus2\<user>\Contacts\CtcDetach

I agree that it should be encrypted (as in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Patchou\MsgPlus2\<user>\Contacts), but, how can that be such a high risk? If you're gonna be so paranoid, then stay away from computers... You also shouldn't use MSN Messenger's logging feature, as it doesn't allow you to encrypt them (which I think is more a privacy issue than having unencrypted e-mail addresses in the registry) and it also stores part of the address in the file name... Come on...

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From http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/data/messenger_plus.htm
IE-SPYADS will add the msgplus.net and msgpluszone.com to your restricted sites zone:
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ehowes/www/resource.htm#IESPYAD

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From http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/data/messenger_plus.htm
Microsoft Giant Anti-Spyware detects Messenger Plus as an Adware Bundler (and rightly so)
http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?id=26501&category=main

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That program is still a beta and detects Plus even if the sponsor isn't installed (not to mention all the false alarms it gives - one guy renamed a program "a.exe" and MS Anti-spyware detected it as spyware).



BTW, there are registry entries for every user in HKEY_USERS, HKEY_CURRENT_USER is a copy of the entry in HKEY_USERS for the current user... A MS MVP should know that, right?