I've had EAC and run several spy/adware programs and they've never detected anything evil from EAC (both Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy). Perhaps the applet was the querying mechanism for album information (freedb client)? Just a thought. It's a solid program and I'll be sad if spyware's the route they've taken recently. I've never read anything about EAC having spyware on board.

-Zeke