SwiftKit
SwiftKit (abbreviated SK, formerly SwiftSwitch) is a RuneScape toolkit created and publicly released by Jason Fah on 1 February 2008.<ref name=""SwiftKit" Team">SwiftKit Team. SwiftKit.net. Retrieved on 24-11-2009.</ref> Its primary purpose is to make the RuneScape experience easier and more convenient for the user by providing quick access to popular features, such as integration with guides (including those for quests, areas, and treasure trails), a built-in IRC client, an instant hiscores lookup table, and other tools including timers and counters.
Since SwiftKit is programmed in Visual Basic 6, it will only work on Windows. However, on 8 July 2010 Bluelight Dev—the development house that created SwiftKit—released a version of SwiftKit Mobile onto the Android Marketplace. On 16 January 2011, they released a native Mac OS X version for BETA testing.
About
The main features include a skill lookup and calculators, an integrated IRC client, custom timers, built in mini-notepad, lightweight browser, atlas and instant access to zybez databases, which help provide information about everything from NPC's to the prices of various items in the game.
SwiftKit also includes features that are used simply to make playing RuneScape more personalised. These features include an mp3 player, clocks, a customisable link window and a way to take, crop and save screenshots with one click.<ref name="AboutSwiftKit">SwiftKit. SwiftKit.net. Retrieved on 24-11-2009.</ref>
Controversy
There has historically been much controversy about whether playing RuneScape with SwiftKit was allowed. At one point, SwiftSwitch - the predecessor to SwiftKit - hid the
advertisements for free users, and it also allowed users to automatically attempt to get into a game world, which bypassed the main page and subsequent pages. For a time, world switching via SwiftSwitch also circumvented the mandatory login delay that one would face when normally switching worlds. All of these features were deemed illegal by Jagex in their revision of Rule 7 in March 2007, and they were removed as a result with the release of SwiftKit. Ads can no longer be hidden for free players and only the main RuneScape page can be loaded through SwiftKit. The toolkit presently complies with all rules set by Jagex, and can therefore be used to play RuneScape with guaranteed impunity.
Before Jagex added the official world switching feature, players often faced difficulty switching to a full world, but SwiftSwitch essentially eliminated that hassle. As a result, the feature was considered an unfair advantage by some players and Jagex Moderators alike, and - in lieu of an official statement by Jagex staff - individual Jagex moderators often gave conflicting opinions on whether or not SwiftSwitch violated Rule 7 and thus frequently contradicted each other. However, a game update later allows players to queue into a full world, making this no longer a problem.
Other features of SwiftSwitch caused controversy even before the implementation of Rule 15. In early 2006, Andrew Gower informed Jason Fah that Jagex's advertisers were complaining about ads being hidden from view in non-member worlds. Andrew later sent a complaint in regard to the automatic world loading feature, which caused severe bandwidth usage. These events led to the addition of Rule 15, which prevented users from bypassing navigation to the game through the RuneScape home page and from making repeated automatic responses that could severely deplete the game's bandwidth (i.e. the short-lived "world watcher" feature, which repeatedly checked a full world for you in the background and alerted you whenever you could access it).
Jagex later added a lite version of their highscore page for toolkits and other programs to parse in an effort to decrease the amount of bandwidth used by those tools.
The Swiftkit Domain Takeover - May 30 2012
| “ | Swiftkit Website Issue Explained
One down side to SwiftKit being as popular and successful as it is, means that it has a giant target on its back. Today we unfortunately experienced the effect of that., which is a shame really as we only exist to offer a free helpful tool to players...It really is unfortunate. As always though, we aim to be as transparent about the situation as possible. At around 3am this morning it came to my attention that someone had gained access to the domain register's account that hosts SwiftKit.net. This allowed them to transfer the SwiftKit.net domain off our account and onto their own. Once they did this they were then able to change the webserver the domain points at, to their own malicious site. The problem was that it took around 5 hours for the domain to be rightfully returned back to us. So during this time the SwiftKit.net domain was pointing to a malicious website. We'll definitely be moving to a different domain registrar in the near future. How was the intruder able to gain access to our domain account? By using a fake ID, or identity document to convince the domain hosting company to reset the e-mail address to their own. Then all they had to do was perform a simple password reset. We're very concerned that this could even happen in the first place, and that it took so long to re-gain control. We'll be looking forward to getting as far away as possible from this domain host. So what does this mean for you as a user? Not too much, SwiftKit itself wasn't affected at all, just the domain. However If you were unfortunate enough to click accept or yes on any JAVA popups that came up I suggest do you a virus scan straight away and once clean change your password. You should never accept any JAVA requests from sources you don't trust. (It states the source in the popup) We have seen this specific malware can be detected and removed by Microsoft Security Essentials. If you believe you have loaded SwiftKit in this small window and accepted any rogue Java confirmations, then it would be a good idea to run a full system scan and perform the steps at the bottom of this post. SwiftKit itself has several layers of protection built into the updater to prevent anyone from being able to push out bogus updates. The only way you could be harmed is if you download or accept something yourself. As it stands we now have full control of our domains and have taken temporarily steps to prevent such a situation from occurring again. DNS changes have been successfully apllied to many users and they should now be directed to the right, normal site. If you still are redirected incorrectly, try clearing your browser's history and cache, and also by going to Start > search for "cmd", and type in "ipconfig /flushdns". This will ensure the right DNS address is obtained from the server. In the coming future we will be looking to implement some permanent changes to further prevent such an occurrence, abandoning our current and frustrating registrar is one of them. We understand our well-earned reputation has been tarnished by this horrible incident, and we understand many are wary using our products in the future. That trust is going to have to be earned back, and I know for some it will be difficult. I want to personally let everyone know the safety and security of all of our users are our #1 priority. The entire SwiftKit staff, including support from our users and Jagex moderators have hopefully showed everyone that we are serious about security. If you have any hesitations or questions please don't hesitate to ask. For detection and removal instructions, click here. |
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Swiftkit Website News
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Gallery
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SwiftKit's load screen
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SwiftKit profiles
