The Pando Pandemic: Why You Might Already Be Infected
By Lo-Ping - Fri Jul 29, 1:19 pm
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Does your internet feel tired? Run down? Does it pop out of parties? Is it unpoopular? Well, you probably have Pando Media Booster to blame for your poor internet performance as of late. But what exactly is Pando Media Booster? Pando Media Booster [PMB] is a stealth P2P program many games (mostly F2P) install. It will run on start up under Pando.exe or PMB.exe. It uploads without prompt from your computer and does not show on tray or task manager. It WILL whore out your internet bandwidth and capacity – anywhere from 10% to 70% of your current speed may be occupied. This is a method for companies to shove bandwidth bills to the consumer.
Current known list of games:
League of Legends [LoL]
Heroes of Newerth [HoN] (confirmed not)
Grando Espada
Vidictus
Allods
Lord of the Rings Online
Maplestory [Any Nexon games in general, it seems]
Bloodline Champions (to some degree)
And these are the ones that the company admits to. There will be more.
Fixes:
1. Uninstall from control panel: This is the easiest, simplest solution.
It will reinstall itself once you run an update from games that utilize it.
If you don’t play those games much, this is your solution.
2. Remove it from startup
Type msconfig in Start Menu -> run.
Remove PMB.exe or Pando.exe from startup list.
The Pando will run again once an updater is started, but at least this will minimize 24/7 whoring.
3. Internalize with hosts file
Find output address (Either ip or address) of Pando, this will depend on what game you play and may not be available to you. Open hosts file (Not hosts.txt, just hosts) at : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_%28file%29
Edit with notepad and add line :127.0.0.1 WhateverAddressWas
This will prevent Pando from sending packets out. It will still occupy some CPU, but won’t whore as much bandwidth.
Fight the power gentlemen. Do not let the companies use your internet for their benefit. Check SpeedTest.net before and after if you so desire. Imagine, there are hundreds of thousands of uneducated players with this bull leeching off them. You are free now, but the companies will abuse this ignorance with full force whenever they can. I’m not sympathetic for those who don’t even check their computer now and then, but I am worried where this will lead.
If anyone else is aware of any other games that use this invasive software, let us know so we can add it to our wall of shame here.
ABOUT LO-PING: This author is actually a default communal posting account. It's used by a handful of freelancers during their trial period to see what they're made of before becoming honorary contributors. If you would like to become one of said freelancers, drop us a line!
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Thanks for this. I have had 350 ping in games since I installed League Of Legends. I only found out today this shit Pando program was uploading data in the background. Uninstalled that shit immediately.
Dragons Nest is another, just installed it with PMB, now both are off of my system.
Nice try, S2.
Thanks for an informative post. Not because I have Pando — I don't game at all — but because I wasn't aware of the bandwidth whoring problem.
Lol at this shit. It isn't malware, its a program that helps you patch quicker. It uses user's bandwith to share the brunt of distributing patches. That way if the servers are full or if they go down you can still patch your game. One easy as fuck way to prevent it from running on your own time? Windows firewall automatically blocks it when you first install it. If you have turned that off or allowed it to go to the ignore list without knowing what the fuck it is you are doing then you have no one to blame but yourself for this minor loss of bandwith.
I wondered what that was and how it kept reinstalling. Thanks.
Wow.
Really unbalanced article man.
Companies don't do this to "shove bandwidth bills to the consumer". Who would companies like Nexus or Riot games possibly benefit from that?
You could at least say what pando is actually used for.
Pando is basically a torrent program that helps makes updates faster. Same sort of thing blizzard uses for WoW.
I'm not exactly a fan of the program. But stop trying to make this sound like this big conspiracy game companies have with ISPs. Makes it sound like you're the one trying to whore out for pageviews.
Mabinogi uses this POS crap-ware.
URL: http://www.mabinogi.nexon.net/
And for all you idiots on here defending Pando, you can all Suck A Fart Out Of My Ass.
You should make a note that if you do uninstall Pando, it won't affect your ability to play these games.
It may reinstall after certain updates, but you can uninstall again immediately after.
I don't see it on my Mac (after installing League of Legends). Thanks for the heads-up though. I'll keep an eye out.
Just for clarification: You can disable Pando manually on League of Legends by opening the "Options" tab in their patcher and unselecting "Allow Peer-To-Peer Transfer". (It is allowed as a default)
Seriously, if anyone has bandwidth caps they should have this turned off already.
League of Legends and Riot do NOT "force it down our throats" by any means.
Speedtest Pre (5 attempts, average) –
Ping:25
DL:22.86
UL:2.16
Speedtest Post (5 attempts, average) –
Ping:25
DL:22.77
UL: 1.89
I play League of Legends and I uninstalled Pando, the launcher showed no signs of trying to reinstall it
The League of Legends launcher does not try to reinstall it. I've been playing LoL for years and never has it "forced" Pando on me. The only time I've ever had Pando on my computer is when I tried out Lord of the Rings Online and that game installed it.
need for speed world, battlefield play 4 free and all other free 2 play games FROM EA DOES NOT include the pando.
BTW
i dont quite understand how to fix this, do we have to follow each of the instructions or can we just only uninstall it from control panel? because i cant seem to find it on msconfig after i uninstalled it!
You are pretty retarded, dude. If you un-install a program, of course you will no longer see it running or see it in msconfig. Why not take the extra two seconds to read….actually read each word by itself…..and comprehend the damn article? I swear you must be one of these r-tard jerks who talk on their goddamn phones while driving. Get your shit together and stop wasting the worlds' time, you DOUCHE.
When I played APB reloaded it installed Pando media booster
Dungeons and Dragons Online installs it.
HoN does not have it. They actually use their own bandwidth in distributing the game.
League of Legends is the most known perpetrator and Riot Games does not want the public to know about the malware packed with their F2P game.
There have been many, maaaaaany other games that installed PMB before LoL was even in existence. I've always uninstalled it because you can just google what it is, it tells you that it's a P2P service, which I don't want.
It's just the same as Ares, using your internet to send its files without your permission, basically like a bot-net.
Does League of Legends always install it?
I've been playing it for months now, and i've got no trace of Pando on my PC at all.
Same, did a check and found no traces of Panda/PMB. Also use forsaken world and HoN
It's not Granado Espada itself, but it's the publisher's launcher. (Gamersfirst, was it?) I believe it will apply to all of it's games.
Yeah, Add Gamersfirst to the list.
HoN does not use it, but you should add Granado Espada to the list.
For mac: Library->Internet Plugins-> Delete 'PandoWebPlugin.plugin'
pewpymcpewppants
How can i remove this on a mac?
I just saw this article and checked my programs list. I had Pando installed, I just removed Forsaken Worlds, and will not play it ever again.
I dont have any of those games listed installed on my laptop, and i had the pando installed :O thx for the info
Don't forget that the largest internet provider in the United States (AT&T) almost secretly enforces a 150 to 250 gigabyte monthly bandwidth cap, to a gamer who's even HEARD of Netflix or Steam that's almost impossible to achieve, how DARE developers use crap technology like Pando, the only way it could possibly be deemed smart is if some board meeting declared that "everyone must have Cable internet with no bandwidth caps by now"