"Bonjour" and Immorality

Ta Ba,

Unfortunately there are no Acronis Managers here on the Forum.  This is a user Forum which is offered by Acronis for users to discuss Acronis products.

You should contact Support for issues with the product and/or submit Feedback with other concerns that you may have using either the Feedback link at the top of this page or the in app Feedback tool found in the Help page of the application GUI.

Hi "Enchantech",

Thank you for the information.

By the way you're like a little upset, because I wrote a bad news about Acronis above... Right?

First of all, Acronis users and forum members (includes you too) should hear this immorality anon I thought.

In fact, I do not care Acronis manufacturer or manager...

Regards,

I think he was just trying to point you in the right direction - but, thanks for your less than stellar forum etiquette in response to someone trying to help out.  

Funny that Bonjour doesn't show up on any spyware lists that I've read and doesn't flag from Malwarebyes, Windows Defender, Symantec EndPoint Protection, or a slew of other antivirus/anti malware products. 

It's not spyware, it's a network discovery protocol service used primarily by Apple, but integrated by other products.  This service is native in all versions of OS X, but also standard in Windows Apple products like iTunes.  It is also a standard network protocol on most network printers and some other third party applications.   This Microsoft forum response is very logical as to the usefulness of bonjour:  http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/…

https://kb.acronis.com/content/23567

Certain NAS devices can be detected by Acronis True Image only if Bonjour software is installed. You can download this third party software here: Bonjour Print Services for Windows. You will find more information about this software on this page.

i don't have any iWare and no NAS and have just uninstalled Bonjour service in windows system settings. ATI is still working fine with no complaints...

Hi Volunteer(!?) Bobbo,

"Funny that" you're trying to protect Acronis above, but you failed, because you are incapable one...

You must not install a different software to my computer without my permission. If you install it, it means you're immoral one. Are you understand Bobbo?

Conclusion: Acronis now totally bloatware.

Note: When you were born, most probably I was analyzing "HijackThis" reports of the computers with safety problems.

Study hard for your lessons, and learn it well: What is "official spyware"?

Hello Ta Ba,

Thank you for your posting. Let me provide you with more information on bonjour usage in Acronis True Image. First of all I'd like to note that bonjour is official and completely compliant with all legal terms service that Acronis and many other companies use under Apple license agreement. We use bonjour for our mobile application to allow network discovery of PC\laptops with the changing IP-address. More about this feature you can read here. If you don't want\need bonjour running on your system - you can just disable it. 

I'd also kindly ask you to respect the community and its members. All our forum volunteers are not payed by Acronis and are helping other users in their spare time. If you want to have a direct contact with Acronis, please use this form. 

Thank you,

Hi Ekterina Surkova, can you or other knowledgeable Acronis Support Officer confirm that if Bonjour can be uninstalled if I only use Acronis True Image 2017 to back-up my pc to external HDD and no other device without affecting the performance of Acronis True Image 2017 or is Bonjour required for Acronis True Image 2017 to work properly in other words is Bonjour absolutely necessary?

  I do not like to have a program installed in my pc if it is not going to be used.

Thank you.

scopio wrote:

Hi Ekterina Surkova, can you or other knowledgeable Acronis Support Officer confirm that if Bonjour can be uninstalled if I only use Acronis True Image 2017 to back-up my pc to external HDD and no other device without affecting the performance of Acronis True Image 2017 or is Bonjour required for Acronis True Image 2017 to work properly in other words is Bonjour absolutely necessary?

  I do not like to have a program installed in my pc if it is not going to be used.

Thank you.

I'd also like to know this.

When I saw Bonjour in the T&C's I assumed it was just there so the same EULA could be used for both Windows and Mac platforms.

I've had bad experiences with Apple software on windows in the past, and specificaly Bonjour, so I don't want it on my system.

ken sendal wrote:

i don't have any iWare and no NAS and have just uninstalled Bonjour service in windows system settings. ATI is still working fine with no complaints...

It will work fine.  You just lose the newer NAS discovery feature.  However, you can still connect to NAS via browse >>> network  or browse and enter the UNC path share name like \\192.168.1.100\nasshare\backupfoldername.

Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:

ken sendal wrote:

i don't have any iWare and no NAS and have just uninstalled Bonjour service in windows system settings. ATI is still working fine with no complaints...

It will work fine.  You just lose the newer NAS discovery feature.  However, you can still connect to NAS via browse >>> network  or browse and enter the UNC path share name like \\192.168.1.100\nasshare\backupfoldername.

 

Thanks Bobbo_3C0X1} had not noticed ken sendal's post above.

I have a brand new install of Acronis 2017 Essential. Can I just uninstall Bonjour without touching anything else in the Acronis install (services, etc)?

What are the repercussions of removing it.

Thanks... 

Michael, I've found the best way to find out about this is just stop the service and see if everything works. If it does, you should be fine.

Personally, I have iTunes and leave it running. I have no idea what would happen if it's disabled, but I doubt any serious trouble.

Bonjour is being used by Acronis to help recognise and provide access to network resources, so while you can disable or uninstall it, you should test if you can still access your network drives or NAS if these are being used to store your backup image files.

I just received an official response from Acronis:

Thank you for contacting Acronis Customer Central. My name is Praveen. I will be happy to help you.

As I understand, you would like to know if you install Acronis True Image 2017 will it install Bonjour services.

Based on your concern, I would like to inform you that when you install Acronis True Image 2017, it will install Acronis True Image 2017 only. It will not install Bonjour services. Bonjour services are a part of Apple services.

Please let me know if we can go ahead and archive this case. Feel free to get back to us if you have any difficulties . We are always here to help you.

Michael, please send Praveen a link to this forum topic and ask him to read the post by Ekaterina which she posted on 09/22/2016 10:41 and stated the purpose of Bonjour as installed by Acronis.

Ekaterina wrote: First of all I'd like to note that bonjour is official and completely compliant with all legal terms service that Acronis and many other companies use under Apple license agreement. We use bonjour for our mobile application to allow network discovery of PC\laptops with the changing IP-address. More about this feature you can read here. If you doesn't want\need bonjour running on your system - you can just disable it. 

I often see responses on Microsoft and other forums where they start out by saying "as I understand" and then rephrase the question.

I have suspected that these responses are automatically generated using AI and a database of information. I question whether a real person has ever read the initial question. Perhaps Praveen is not a real person... or maybe he's the one assigned the issue if it goes to the next step.

To add to Steve's note from Ekaterina, there's a KB article published as well, so support is a robot or someone not doing a very thorough job in this case. 

39490: Acronis Files Connect: using Bonjour across subnets

I can confirm, in my experience, that removing Bonjour using Windows Features and Programs does not affect Acronis unless using the mobile backup services (which I do not use). Also, disabling the services Acronis Mobile Backup Server and Acronis Mobile Backup Status Server does not affect my image and file backups to an external USB-C drive.

Finally, I have also stopped the Active protection component without any adverse effects.

Hope this helps.

I wish they would make Mobile Backup and Active modular so we don't need to run resources that we don't need, and I have made the request but Acronis has a habit of installing bloatware.

I'm back to 2017 as Acronis has an issue restoring from CD/DVD with a Logitech Performance MX mouse, and other wireless mice? I can use the mouse on the selection screen but when it actually loads the recovery program the mouse goes dead. It's also happening on Logitech's current wireless mice. My mouse woks fine on 2017 in recovery...

I used to fret about Bonjour – it turned up on a couple of laptops – and then I grew up.

It is one of those things that Apple has foisted on the world. It is not alone in this, Microsoft also writes "helpers".

Writers of other software often choose to plug into these third party resources, especially if they make the user's life easier.

These third-party "add ins" can actually reduce the amount of stuff that software has to plonk on your PC. They provide a common resource that programmers can call on. Indeed, a lot of software is a whole rat's nest of these add ons.

Ever used a program to "view" a file? There's a good chance that Oracle wrote the software that does this.

I wouldn't put Bonjour on the same level as stuff like dotNet, but you'll get the point. Eliminate all these evil creatures, and you will find life very difficult.

The thing is I have Acronis Standard because I'm only interested in local backups. I don't care about Mobile backups or Active Defense. There is no reason for Acronis to force these on us when they could simply give us the option to omit these on install. However, Acronis feels they know best for their customers.

There is no reason for us to hack the install to omit Acronis features that we don't need.

Are you suggesting that Acronis should offer a menu of items that each user can pick from when they want to install a program? That is certainly an interesting idea.

At one time that approach was pretty common, as we all picked out way through drop-down lists of features. (Ever installed WordPerfect?) I suspect that the industry abandoned that model because it confused the heck out of customers. It would be even worse if Acronis tried to explain what "nasties" came with each feature.

As it is, if you never use anything from Acronis, or anyone else, that uses Bonjour then, beyond the disk space, it will have zero impact on your PC.

I suspect that Acronis are wanting to tightly integrate these features into their application as much as possible for reasons of security and efficiency but the request is valid to be asked of the Acronis developers.  We can debate it as long as we care to in these forums but it will need users to submit Feedback or to open Support Cases direct with Acronis to try to persuade them to listen to the request and consider it.

This has already been mentioned several times to the developers and they finally separated the cloud service in the standard edition.

More people need to voice their dissatisfaction with these added services being installed by default.

Hello everyone,

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on this topic!

As Ekaterina Surkova mentionned, Bonjour is official and compliant with all legal terms. It is not a spyware program and does not harm the computer.
Here is an official Microsoft Support answer about the service and how to delete it if you would like to:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance…
You will indeed lose the NAS discovery feature but the local functionality of Acronis True Image will not be impacted.

As for the other topic raised in this thread, we are currently not planning the "granular" installation scenario as Acronis True Image is focused on the easy and fast installation and having the menu to chose from may make installation slower or more difficult for the users.

we are currently not planning the "granular" installation scenario as Acronis True Image is focused on the easy and fast installation and having the menu to chose from may make installation slower or more difficult for the users.

That's fine by me. Any other option could easily lead to the confusion I mentioned earlier.