<font color=skyblue>Hello folks. I have recently discovered an item called Viewpoint on my PC. Doing a search on Google leads me to two possible conclusions.
1. It is a good thing to have.
2. It is a bad thing to have.

I suppose this thing was added to my PC when I upgraded Adobe Reader. It will most likely also be on anyone's PC that uses AOL, AIM, or Netscape from what I have read.

Here are two websites that help explain the two "viewpoints" of this matter.

The Pro Viewpoint link. Please scroll down to the FAQ, which explains what they want you to know about it.

The anti viewpoint link. Note that they say that this does report back to headquarters on you.

Just for reference, This page lists some removal instructions, in case you have found this on your PC. Just for some laughs, please scroll down to the bottom where there is a little forum of Q&A...and see the guy that posted the online chat with a tech, who refused to help this kid remove the stuff.


So in conclusion...Is all this paranoia, and there is no real problem with the software, or is it an elusive piece of crap that my spyware checkers are not finding?</font>

I would distrust the softwares homepage in any and all intances.

Going by the tenebril site, this dosent seem to be a major problem, and since its installed by AoL, its probably not as badly written as your average hijacker or what have you (AoL do suck, but not to the extent of crashing every users PC. Not regularly at least).

So, your choice. I'd kill it on general principle, since it is running in the background and eating valuable cycles, but you could leave it without major consequence.

<font color=skyblue>Its gone. Aside from deleting everything that was listed on that website, I also went to the registry and took out a whole heap of crap, then rebooted.

I think my PC actually gave a sigh of relief. </font>

Viewpoint is used by AOL to view the AOL custom desktops... the desktops you see only when signed on. My adware and spyware checkers have never *hit* on Viewpoint.

<font color=skyblue>Since I do not have AOL...I should not therefore have this program. </font>