Had to remove Muse Hub owing to Torrent use
I had to remove Muse Hub because the Muse.Service task always opened BitTorrent connections even though Muse Hub was told not to use community support. This background task often connected with what my provider called "known malicious sites", and I kept getting warning messages from them.
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Report this to https://musehub.zendesk.com/hc/en-gb
Go to settings and turn off “Enable Community Distribution” (technically speaking, this is a feature not a bug).
I removed Musehub because of excessive CPU usage and now I think that you are saying that by default it is enabling torrent connections. That is unacceptable to me without knowing that it is doing that. How do I know how much bandwidth it is using or how to restrict it or if it is secure ?
Ok, now this pisses me off. For a little while now, my computer has been spiking my CPU and hard drive for the first 15-20 minutes after startup, and my Internet provider has been saying I've been using a lot more data, and I've been going over my limit faster than usual and being charged for it. I thought I had some sort of virus, which nothing could detect. Turns out it was even worse. I had Muse Hub, doing this without my knowledge or consent. I just uninstalled it. After uninstalling it, my problems have disappeared completely. Unfortunately, my access to Muse Sounds has also completely disappeared, even though they are installed. WHAT THE HELL kind of sleazy business has this once great piece of open source software been turned into?!?! Why the proprietary blob in order to access a feature?! This is crap. I'm really ticked! One might even contend that you owe me money for the overuse of my Internet, my time, and my frustration, without my knowledge or permission! This is horrible business practice! If you give me access to Muse Sounds WITHOUT that crapware Muse Hub, I MIGHT be willing to forgive this horrendous misstep on your part. But know that I. AM. PISSED. OFF! This MUST change NOW! Do you really want to invite a lawsuit from this sort of behavior?!
In reply to Ok, now this pisses me off… by mikefreeman
@mikefreeman
If you uninstalled the Hub and now can't use MuseSounds, you may have other problems. MuseSounds work even without the Hub being installed.
Personally, I only turn the Hub on once a week or so to check for updates. You can completely uninstall it, instead. Then reinstall to check.
People keep saying that they think the Hub is dangerous. That it has root access, and opens ports to unwanted traffic. But no documentation is provided. Is the Hub dangerous? I see no evidence of anything on my system.
In reply to @mikefreeman If you… by bobjp
All I know is that with Muse Hub installed, MuseScore finds and uses Muse Sounds without any issues. When I uninstall Muse Hub, MuseScore reports that Muse Sounds is there, but it is "Inactive", and cannot be selected for use. Maybe something else is wrong, but I can't find what it might be. If it matters, I'm running on Linux, so the situation may be different for Windows or MacOS users.
As far as the danger of Muse Hub: Without documentation, and without open source code to look at, there is no way of fully knowing what this program is doing with (or to) your computer. That's why it's dangerous. It's the lack of full disclosure to the user, in accordance with the open source licensing of MuseScore itself, that brings this all into question. Of the few things we are told that it does: There is absolutely no reason to have constant root access (it should only ask the user for root access if the user chooses to install the sounds, effects, etc. outside of normal userspace). There is absolutely no reason to be required in order to use something it has downloaded (which we've discussed above). There is absolutely no reason to be opt-out instead of opt-in (not first informing the user that it is a torrent client using up Internet bandwidth and data until the user themselves finally delves into the settings, which some may not do for some time -- if ever). There is absolutely no reason for its existence at all (as all of its features could have been included in MuseScore itself), unless there's something shady going on in the closed source code that would have been revealed by having the code exposed by MuseScore's open source licensing. So yes, this all seems potentially quite dangerous.
MuseHub must only be installed to use MuseSounds, there is no need to have it actively running in the background. After installation and download simply untick the autostart setting of MuseHub, reboot and you're safe.
![MH.png]( "MH.png")
And as said previously: deactivate the community support feature.
In reply to MuseHub must only be… by the_mnbvcx
That community feature should really be off by default and on only after a corresponding dialog and consent of the user. IMHO this is a serious privacy issue.
In reply to That community feature… by Jojo-Schmitz
Agreed. This is a terrible companion for an open-source application. All of its reported features could easily be done (and have been done in other programs) with open-source, without constant root-level access, and without doing what it does automatically without asking for user consent first. And really, all of this could have been put into MuseScore itself without forcing the user to install a separate, closed-source blob.
In reply to That community feature… by Jojo-Schmitz
This is indeed a very serious privacy issue!
I work as an IT professional, and I occasionally use my work PC for editing and printing scores during break time (music is just a side gig). Until today, I was never worried about MuseScore, seeing it as a safe to use, open-source, and very popular software.
Today I was confronted by head of security as their sensors were tripped by the BitTorrent traffic from Muse Hub, which I was completely unaware of.
Safe to say, I will never be using MuseScore on my work PC again, and I no longer trust this otherwise great piece of software.
In reply to This is indeed a very… by helgesdk
I agree, opening and using a BitTorrent port without explicit consent of the user is a serious breach of trust and privacy
In reply to I agree, opening and using a… by Jojo-Schmitz
+1 I share the sentiment common on this page. It is completely wrong to start up a BitTorrent client on someone’s machine without their explicit consent. This thread was started a while ago so it’s also crazy this hadn't been changed already, before I recently encountered it. (hopefully it’s been changed by now). Music Hub uninstalled!
In reply to MuseHub must only be… by the_mnbvcx
"untick the autostart setting of MuseHub, reboot and you're safe."
=> Sure it is not just the Muse-hub application while the service/helper application keeps running with superpower in the background?
Even if 'community acceleration' is disabled, there is still communication with the tracker.
In any case, this is not the way it works in Linux.
In reply to "untick the autostart… by graffesmusic
Admittedly I have only Windows 10 & 11 available for testing and indeed, the Muse Hub Background Service keeps running - but at 0% CPU. It took 0.1% for a moment during startup, but then fell back to idling around in RAM (~32MB consumption)
In reply to Admittedly I have only… by the_mnbvcx
You could try disabling it in the Windows registry:
https://musehub.zendesk.com/hc/en-gb/community/posts/8458857089053-Unin…-
Edit: MuseHub_1.0.1.693_x64 is very tenacious; Sysinternals Windows Autoruns64 shows it is still running even after Change Settings:
Settings > Apps > Installed apps > Muse Hub > Advanced Options > Background apps permissions > Let this app run in background: choose Never. Restart computer: MuseHub is running but it will not show up in the System tray.
Edit2: Of course you could stop the service at the start of each session. An undesirable workaround.
Is this going to be addressed? It seems a serious issue.
In reply to Is this going to be… by xavierjazz
From what I've seen, Muse Hub is separate from the MuseScore project and has no GitHub source site. Its behavior is not well documented or controlled, and it seems to be a product that was released before debugging was completed. There also seems to be no activity to correct any of the issues that users have raised. The Muse Hub site has a beta release download, but there's no documentation of what is covered in the release, what bugs/issues/features are addressed, or anything. The lack of transparency with Muse Hub is a major concern, and I personally will be avoiding it.
Something else I though I'd mention about Muse Hub: you can turn off its "Community Acceleration" option. You can turn off its Auto Update options. You can turn off its Auto Start option. And you can stop the Muse Hub Service... temporarily only. What you cannot do is change the Service Type to anything from its default, Automatic. That option is greyed out, even if you are logged on as Administrator. That means that even if you stop the service, it will automatically start again after a re-boot. I can find no way to change this behavior.
I don't know if Muse Hub Service is communicating with anywhere on the internet while its running with all those options turned off, but it seems to me to be quite likely that it CAN if it wants, and I as the computer owner have no control over it. I don't see anything to assure me that it ISN'T. I see little or no discussion of this issue - maybe I'm missing it? Is this something that will be changed in the future? This seems to me to be highly user-unfriendly and potentially dangerous.
In reply to Something else I though I'd… by rednoise99
Confirmed. Not good...