Why is ZeroTier on my laptop if I never installed it?
Asked by
CuriousCat92
I turned on my laptop today and noticed ZeroTier showing up in the "Recent" section after searching for it. The strange part is that I didn't install it myself. I looked it up and found out that it's a type of VPN. I tried to right-click it but accidentally clicked it; nothing seemed to happen. I checked my network settings and saw that it was active, though I disabled it for now. It's been installed since August 26, and it was transferring data at 100 Mbps for over 57 minutes. I took some notes on its IPv6 address and MAC address before turning it off. I also ran a Windows Defender scan that turned up clean and checked the programs list but didn't find anything unusual. What's the best move for me here? Should I just uninstall it to be safe?
Answers
It's weird that it showed up if you didn't put it there. Usually, it can't install itself. If you bought the laptop new and it’s only been yours, someone else might have set it up for you or there might have been leftovers from a previous user if it was second-hand. You might want to check your user accounts to ensure nobody else has admin privileges.
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CuriousCat92: I bought it new, but I looked for other accounts and couldn't find any. It seems like the only account is mine. Not sure how to check if anything else got installed on August 26.