Hi everybody,

here are the answers to your questions.

What is Connect?

Connect is a tool we use to communicate directly and efficiently with our customers in order to share valuable offers and other information. Since it operates independently of your MAGIX software, you don't have to open your software to receive our best offers. With Connect, you'll never miss out on our best deals or important information.

 
Do I have to use Connect? Can I uninstall it?

No, you do not have to use Connect. To uninstall it, go to your system's Control Panel, choose Uninstall a program, find Connect in the list, and follow the normal uninstall procedure from there. While this will not affect the operation of your MAGIX software in any way, remember that you will no longer receive future offers through the Connect system.

Does Connect collect data from me?

Connect gathers anonymized data only relating to your interaction with the notifications. This enables us to optimize our offers and show only relevant deals without burying you in offers you are not interested in. Connect does not collect your personal data, or any data which can be connected specifically to you. Of course we never disclose your data to third parties.

Best regards

Mathias

thank Mathias

I'll post your article to my blog and the Vegas Community.

First of all. This is a big issue for me:

Every time I boot my pc up, I have enough crap that loads, I don't need extra stuff that looks like I got infected with a virus. The fact that someone thought that this abomination of marketing was a "good" idea deeply saddens me and the fact that you have the audacity to carry this out BY DEFAULT is despicable, scummy and invasive.

I don't enjoy having my desktop space littered with your marketing rubbish every time I turn my computer on.

This kind of behavior, I am sick of. This makes me NEVER want to buy anything that you create, not from you or from a third party seller and even actively recommend people NEVER buy your products because they have the audacity to do this. Every product that I see in these annoying pop-up ads, I will deliberately avoid what they're trying o promote. This is what I would expect from a free piece of rubbish software that is utter garbage.

In my opinion, if you want to market any of your software to your clients, I suggest you either use a newsletter that you have to opt-in for and/or a changelog that displays a similar message of changes between your software versions and a checkbox to disable it from popping up when you start up the software. That would be considerably less annoying and probably be more a professional way of doing it.

If any of the staff read this, please forward this to anyone that should listen to it, and this also applies to the MAGIX Music maker software as well

Side Note: this forum page doesn't have a visible "comment" button if your not on the last page, this took me a while to work out how to actually send this

Side Note: visible on every page:

Try clicking it to see what you'd get.

And https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/how-do-i-get-rid-of-this-adware--113291/#ca700144

Now a selectable component.

First of all. This is a big issue for me:

Yes, it is remarkable that you post in this thread without reading the post from the day before. If you read the entire thread you will see that Magix was asked to please make it selectable in the the installation and they did. Additionally Vegas itself has a "display news" configuration option, you should keep that enabled so as to be notified in case of important new versions.

What mechanism does Connect use to start at boot time? I don't see it listed in Task Manager's "Startup" list, and I couldn't find it in the registry (checked local machine and current user), or the Start Menu "Startup" directory (again, system-wide and current user directories).

The fact that Connect is not visible in the Task Manager is extremely shady (I still don't know how it's starting), "Connect" is a very generic choice of name for this program, and MAGIX is not listed as the publisher of Connect in the list of installed programs. The only conclusion I can come to is that MAGIX is trying to hide the purpose of this program and make it difficult to uninstall so that they can continue to deliver ads to people who have uninstalled their software.

This is Not OK.

Dear annika, I totally disagree on this.

1. You are not forced to install it, you can simply not to choose to install it.

2. It is not hidden it is clearly visible in Task Manager.

3. It does start at boot time. It starts whenever you log in, Windows explorer makes it start because it is listed in

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

See the attached pictures.

I last installed a Vegas product over a year ago, so when I received the installation pop-up today I naturally assumed it to be malware. I was not given a choice way back then and there was no explanation as to what is was for today. I don't know what triggered it to happen today as I have already been receiving Magix nagware pop-ups to upgrade, buy this etc etc ad nauseum. Naturally, one can understand my suspicion. Now that I know what it is for, I will be getting rid of it.

Actually it does come with Acid studio 10 too. The strangest is that this connect thing seems to be installed (as files properties says) a few days ago... when Acid10 was in september 2017 !!

Arnaud, the current version is perhaps an update of a previous install. It is not shady, it is now an install choice, it is well behaved and uninstallable and well described in this thread.Yes, be awake, but don't chase shadows that are not there.

A couple of weeks ago, the following message popped up:

I did it on both of my computers. It was already there. I presume that this was a result of many complaints.

Here is what it looks like when you open it. It is in the Hidden icons in the task bar tray at the bottom right of Windows. For some reason, I have it in German:

You can de-activate the programs for which you do not want to receive notices, or de-activate all.

Note the other buttons at the left. There are uses for these that have nothing to do with notifications from Magix. Click on them and read what it says for each. For example, if you use Cloud services with files on them, you can define the access here.

I recommend keeping Magix Connect installed and using it to your advantage. I don't know about Vegas 15 or 16, but in Video Pro X, Movie Edit Pro and some other Magix programs, under the Import tab is "Cloud Import." Clicking on this opens Magix Connect and goes to the Cloud import tab.

I recommend keeping Magix Connect installed and using it to your advantage. I don't know about Vegas 15 or 16, but in Video Pro X, Movie Edit Pro and some other Magix programs, under the Import tab is "Cloud Import." Clicking on this opens Magix Connect and goes to the Cloud import tab.

I don't see any advantage to what is essentially nag-ware. Any update notifications should be handled within the application.

I recently installed Sound Forge 11 on my music DAW. I've had a license for it for many years. The installation silently installed Magix Connect. Some days later I booted my DAW and this "Agree and Install" screen pops up without any provocation on my part. There was no taskbar icon related to this screen or any other visible mechanism for determining where this pop up was coming from. I find this kind of behavior to be reprehensible in what are supposed to be "professional" applications.

digilyd wrote on 3/7/2018, 6:13 PM

"No, it is not spyware, it shows notifications about new......"

 

This is the very definition of spam.

I did warn when Magix bought Sony Vegas that spam would follow shortly.

Steve,

Did you read at all what I put in my post? And the others? Magix Connect serves several purposes, one of which is to inform you of updates. You can turn off everything for which you don't want to receive information, or all of them. Try that with the same type of thing from other vendors, like Corel, doesn't work and its only purpose is to try to sell you stuff. Magix asks if you want to install Magix Connect and before installation, click on it and you will see what it does. If you install it and don't turn off the receipt of news for the programs that you don't want to receive, then that is your problem, not theirs. You accepted it.

I just installed Vegas Pro 16 and there was no notification of installing either Magix Connect v3.0.0.1 or Magix PC Check & Tuning 2019 v2.7.0.56. And Magix Connect was in German what was that about when I live in California. I uninstalled both unwanted and intrusive programs.

And Magix Connect was in German what was that about when I live in California

I am in Australia, and I only get the German version even though the settings are set to English. However, as being mildly competent in French, I changed the settings in MAGIX Connect to French, and the text did in fact change to French. I then changed the settings from French to English, et voila, the text changed to English. Mmm!

@Dexcon

Well I'll be....

That trick worked and I now have Magix Connect in English. Thank you.

Connect is a tool we use to communicate directly and efficiently with our customers in order to share valuable offers and other information.

Thanks for purchasing our software. To reward customers who purchased this, we're going to install adware and try to hide it. What a tone deaf joke.

Seriously, between this and Magix requiring me to activate my software basically every single time I run it, why not pirate the software? I own every version of Vegas since 3, but why do I get a worse experience than those that pirate the software?

I am unable to get rid of these Pop Ads. I am faced with doing a clean install of Windows in order to get rid of these ads. Needless to say I will not be reinstalling your products on my system. !!!

Windows settings - software - connect - deinstall.
As every software.

Windows settings - software - connect - deinstall.
As every software.

Not on my machine.
'Connect' does not appear in Control Panel uninstall.
'Connect' does not appear in Task Manager.
'Connect' does not appear in Services.
Typing 'Connect' in the search box brings up the app, but there are no options to uninstall.
If you right click and select 'App Settings' I get a Windows settings page, but the 'Uninstall' button is greyed out.

They are obviously doing their very best to NOT let you opt out, and certainly virtually impossible for the less computer savvy.

And as for the suggestion by some people that it is an installation 'option', it certainly doesn't warn you that 'Connect' will spam you with ads! To the naïve user, it just looks like an essential part of the installation.

I don't have it installed so cannot check but presumably you also looked for "Magix Connect"?

Typing "Connect" in Win10 Search box brings up a Windows Connect item for me. Don't ask me what it is. Another pesky thing that MS installs.