What is MarkAny's ContentSafer?

[l3enny]

This question may seem unrelated to the subject matter, but this program recently appeared in my startup list and was installed at the same time as SMS. As far as I can tell it's some sort of DRM program that runs itself at startup that Samsung never really makes it obvious they are installing. The only mention I can find of it in relation to the T9 is at:

http://reviews.cnet.com/Samsung_YP_T...8&cval=2281558

If you search for just maagent.exe (the executable run on startup) there are a few results with people trying to exorcise it out of their machine with more than a little trouble. As much as I like the T9 I am not too happy with Samsung about being underhanded about installing this without being clear about it, even if they buried in their EULA.

And not to start a derail about piracy and such, but one of MarkAny's headlines on their site is "DRM is good for you".

[JoeK]

You know I vaguely remember my virus program complaining that SMS installation was attempting to modify the registry to allow two programs to start at startup.

I did not allow the registry change and SMS functions properly. I'll have to go back and check the logs.

[chumley]

Thanks for the warning. I don't know what content Samsung needs to protect, since we aren't getting content from them. What's be best way to prevent this beast from installing? I use Avast antivirus, and I don't think it gives the option to block registry changes.

[l3enny]

Originally Posted by chumley

Thanks for the warning. I don't know what content Samsung needs to protect, since we aren't getting content from them. What's be best way to prevent this beast from installing? I use Avast antivirus, and I don't think it gives the option to block registry changes.

No clue, I haven't bothered installing it on my clean computer. You could try and see if there's an installer on the cd that is solely for SMS, one could also try moving all the files to the computer with the exception of the ContentSafer files to see if that works. You could install the 1.50 firmware to enable UMS, but as has been mentioned you'll have sorting issues if you don't update the database via SMS. If I find the time I'll try and work my way around it some time this week, should I find anything definite I'll post it.

[chumley]

I finally got up nerve to install SMS yesterday (ver 5.1.1.6), just out of curiosity. I think the reason SMS includes the MarkAny garbage is because of the Samsung online music store. I didn't realize that SMS included that. I'm sure they are trying to copy-protect their content. But ContentSafer is way to intrusive for my liking. I wish there was an option to not install the music store and thus not install ContentSafer.

Thanks to this thread, I knew to beware of ContentSafer when installing SMS. So before installing SMS, I installed Spyware Terminator (http://www.spywareterminator.com/). The real-time protection features give you some control over what is done on your machine.

During the installation, I blocked the attempt to set maagent and smstray as startup items. SMS works ok without them. With this done, there are no extra background processes on my system due to SMS.

After installing SMS, Spyware Terminator revealed that macsmanager.dll was being accessed every time I tried to start ANY program! Unacceptable. To cure this, I had to go into regedit and delete any references to macsmanager that said anything about ShellHook. Search for "macsmanager". There were 4 nodes that I deleted. After doing so, the needless accesses to macsmanager.dll stopped, and SMS still runs ok.

Note that if you try to delete the Program Files/MarkAny folder, or if you try to block the loading of the MarkAny dlls while SMS is loading, then SMS will no longer work.

[lint28]

wow...looks like i got a lot of work to do this weekend!! thanks for the great info.

[sundaysad]

I deleted SMS from my computer and I want to get rid of MarkAny, also. I tried going through regedit, but it wouldn't let me delete any of the items there.

[Technomancer]

MarkAny is a DRM middleware. It's software that handles DRM in a way the T9 can understand. You're correct in assuming the Samsung store would use it. Also, it is crucial to creating videos that work on the T9 as each of the SVI files is signed by the MarkAny app in the conversion process.

It's not evil. It might be poorly-written. But it's needed if you're converting videos at least.