WHAgent.exe
(webHancer Corporation)
The main component of webHancer. First, what webHancer Corporation say about webHancer : "webHancer Customer Companion resides on the end-users computer where it transparently monitors Internet performance. It measures overall network/site delay and the performance times experienced by actual end-users. It unobtrusively measures DNS lookups, TCP connect and web-page download performance which includes DNS Lookup Time, Response Time, Network Round Trip Time, Load Time, Connection Delay, Access Speed. webHancer sends information about web sites you have visited back to a webHancer server. This information is used by e-business sites to help improve the performance of their sites, in turn improving the surfing experience of end-users like you."
Our translation : spyware. Software like this has no business being on your PC. We consider it an invasion of the end-user privacy. In most cases webHancer comes bundled with free or cheaply priced software. Versions of Audio Galaxy, iMesh, and Wildcat Web Optimizer include it.
Recommendation :
Any software like webHancer which sends information back to a central server about almost any Internet activity that you perform, will inevitably have a negative performance effect on your Internet browsing, particularly if you connect via modem or ISDN, rather than via ADSL or Cable Modem. As if this were not enough webHancer sometimes prevents the installation of software (WinZip), it crashes too often on bootup with illegal operations, PCs suffer blue screens or illegal operations mentioning WHAGENT. But it gets worse : hastily getting rid of webHancer will in most cases either prevent your PC from accessing the Internet, or you will suffer endless crashes in your browser. Unbelievable, and unacceptable. This is virus-like behaviour, pure and simple. It is our view that webHancer is about the worst piece of spyware there is .
The best way we have found of getting rid of webHancer is : (1) Remove webHancer Customer Companion through the "Add\Remove Programs" icon in the Control Panel. (2) Next, reboot. (3) Finally, download SpyBot Search & Destroy from our PC Query form.