How to Defeat NetZero's 40 hour limit by changing a registry key.
7f763e182ad0ee27499c4434a8253f180afda1de13123b843e942ad079185d85
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This hack brought to you by:
kAmIkAzE (01/26/01)
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We're one step ahead of them again! As most of you already know of, or will soon find out,
NetZero is being hacked so much, and not receiving nearly as much money from that stupid banner
of theirs, that they have thought of an ultimate plan: To set higher security, immediate deletion
of an account when thought to be using Dial-Up Networking (DUN) to access NetZero, and a maximum
limit of hours allowed online.
The Idea
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NetZero set a maximum number of _FREE_ hours online to 40. After you reach your 40 hours, the
only web site you can go to is NetZero. If you type in any other address, for example,
yahoo.com, it tells you the limit is up and you can buy unlimited access for the rest of the
month (free hours begin again the next month) for $9.95. This way, people don't use the service
as much and they may get some money out of stupid...I mean...people that use the internet a lot
and would like to "pay" for their "free" service.
How It Works
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Some people may think, "Well, I'll just make a new user name and they won't know I'm the same
person." Wrong! You aren't identified by your user name at all! As some people may already
know, they track you by an entry in the registry. The location of it is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NetZero, Inc.\NetZero. In here, you will find two keys, MachineID
and SessionCtr. The MachineID is how they know which computer is which. And also the
unimportant SessionCtr, I _think_, tracks how many times you have dialed in, logged in, or
something like that.
The Hack
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Basically all you have to do is just delete both keys and log into NetZero with your existing
account and it should hopefully work. If it doesn't, first try creating a new account but you
might not be able to because they're getting really picky about that for some reason. Second,
try searching through the registry for NetZero and delete anything that looks highly
suspicious. Just make sure it's safe to delete before you do. If you're not sure, you can always
export the registry key to a file for backup.
*** If you find an alternate way of doing this, please e-mail me at mikeal04@yahoo.com ***
Disclaimer
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This hack is only for informal and educational purposes only and shouldn't be used to screw
NetZero out of any more money we have already caused them to lose. But if you're desperate, we
understand, but I still don't take any responsibility.