Why does EasyBCD's UltraDefrag call Google?

K

koolezt

Member
When I try to use EasyBCD to add a .iso boot entry, it starts UltraDefrag, defragging the .iso. UltraDefrag promptly calls 173.194.34.129, which whois.internic.net reports as

Host information for "173.194.34.129":
Host name: lhr14s21-in-f1.1e100.net
IP address: 173.194.34.129
Domain name: 1e100.net
Top-Level: NET
Country (EN): Network
Country (DE): Netzwerk
Whois server: whois.internic.net

​
1e100.net is known to be owned by Google. Why the call?
angry.gif
A screenshot is attached.
 

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That's a good question. I'm not sure (UltraDefrag was not developed by us).

I'll look into it, but in the meanwhile, UltraDefrag is open source: you can see the source code on source forge: UltraDefrag - Browse Files at SourceForge.net

Addendum

OK, I found it.

In src/gui/main.c, ultradefrag makes a call to Google Analytics to anonymously record usage statistics. Will look into disabling this for future EasyBCD releases.
 
Great tech-support for a fine product

Thanks for the prompt reply. This is a real kool product: one that I'd happily pay for - and your support rocks too.

A setup opt-in would be fine. Google already knows a lot about my computing habits via Chrome, Android, Maps, gMail and YouTube (and that's the ones I know about), so a bit more or less makes no practical difference. I for one wouldn't mind opting in, but I need the option.

Meanwhile, I had used my security package to deny the connection request, and the defrag hung after about two hours (between my previous post and this one). SysInternals' Process Monitor confirmed the hang, but that's another thread. Anyway, based on your assurance that the connection is harmless, I'll allow it and see what happens.
 
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I agree with you, but like I said, we didn't write UltraDefrag and actually don't see the results of nor benefit anything from the call to Google Analytics. It's a neat opensource utility by a 3rd party that EasyBCD uses to defrag your USB stick so our bootloader can load your ISO from it (bootloader doesn't support fragmented files).
As it is open source, we can modify it to remove the call to Google.
 
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