Pando Media Booster - Zombie Software?

Zephiran

So, a brief preface. I just got back to my apartment from staying with my parents over Christmas, and am starting to settle back in to my regular studying schedule. I boot up all of my gear, preparing to write a couple essays which are in all honesty quite overdue, and procrastinate when I inevitably can't get anything done.

But when I've sat down for a bit, I get this update prompt from a program called "Pando Media Booster". The name sounds unfamiliar, and since I typically keep good track of my programs I figure this is some nasty shit. Well, crisis averted to an extent, a quick refresher on the software tells me it's a semi-legit P2P program commonly bundled with a variety of F2P MMOs, and even some that aren't, but the software is reportedly a goddamn resource hog and fairly annoying to deal with. Even though I don't know where I picked it up, since I don't play any MMOs or anything such-like, I figure, hey, it's not as bad as I first thought, it's a second-hand PC I bought on the cheap so perhaps that's where the program is from. Might as well uninstall it posthaste since it's supposedly easy-peasy to do.

Well, here's the kicker:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_Media_Booster

Pertinent Information wrote:

Pando shut down its servers and ceased business on August 31, 2013.

Browsing around some more before undertaking the removal process, I take a closer gander at the Wikipedia article of the company. I find out that the bloody thing is supposed to be defunct and the company shut down since last August, months ago! It's an update prompt from beyond the grave, it seems.

In short, my question is this - How in the flipping fuck is the program capable of giving me an update prompt now, of all times, given that it sure as shit hasn't before when one might assume it would be pertinent? Is this something that I should worry about to a greater extent than I already do?

schuss

I wouldn't worry about it too much. It was used in older versions of League of Legends, so just remove it and be done with it.

Essee

Yeah, don't worry about it, dude. Just uninstall it and it should be all good. Maybe the update prompter points to somewhere that wasn't shut down, like a big download site or something, or maybe it just pretends there's an update every so often because it was always kind of a sketchy program. If it's off your machine, you're good.

Zephiran

Yeah, I went ahead and uninstalled it in fairly short order, and though I have yet to restart my machine I'm no longer being hit with the same update prompt every couple minutes. Though I do still find all this weird as shit, it sure is a load off my chest now that I can have some peace of mind.

see317

Essee wrote: »

Yeah, don't worry about it, dude. Just uninstall it and it should be all good. Maybe the update prompter points to somewhere that wasn't shut down, like a big download site or something, or maybe it just pretends there's an update every so often because it was always kind of a sketchy program. If it's off your machine, you're good.

That last would be my bet. The program probably had a timer built in to look for an update after not being updated for however long it's been. Timer goes off, it looks for an update, but can't get an answer because all the servers are off. The program assumes this is a network problem (because programmers don't assume they'll be shut down when writing this stuff), and harasses you to fix the network so it can update.