IBM Trusteer Rapport is the worst piece of software I have had to install recently. I resent that so many banks are requiring their customers to install it – just so as to be able to access certain types of e-banking.

I get it – departments like accounting easily fall prey to phishing, and even sophisticated users make mistakes, and there exist attacks that fool them. But Trusteer Rapport has exactly the effect I expected from a compulsory piece of software. It slows down the system by about a factor of 5. Directories take centuries to browse, documents take epochs to print, and files take a long time to open. And the only way to fix it is... ta-daaa – to completely uninstall Trusteer Rapport.

The product constantly consumes CPU, even when the computer is inactive, but you wouldn't know it. It doesn't consume CPU in its own components, you see. Instead, it causes high CPU consumption in WmiPrvSE, a Windows component. This regularly jumps to 100% of a single CPU core while Trusteer Rapport is installed. Using the product's own interface to "shut it down" does not help. Stopping the Rapport Management Service does not help. Disabling the service... oh you can't disable it! Tough luck! It has a driver that keeps a lock on the service to prevent this.

The only way to get rid of this crap, and its deleterious effects, is to completely uninstall it.

Until, you know – you need to make payments!