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A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
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Previous: Cafe Press dog t-shirt fitting instructions | Main | Next: M27 westbound sign in Hampshire, UK
December 29, 2005 12:03 AM
Broken: "Pop-up" pop-up blocker ad
Matt Larson writes:
I am rather sick of annoying pop-ups, and berating me with pop-ups is probably not the best way to get me to download your product.
Also, this window continued to appear about 10 times after i kept closing it
Reminds me of the old cartoon where the guy picks up a brick that's been thrown through his window, and there's a note attached to it for 'Joe's Window and Glass Repair'
Well, this IS an ad for a 'toolbar', which means it's also probably packaged with spyware/annoying 'features'.
I guess as long as people can make money doing it, there will always be a market for this crap.
what's broken is that there are people out there that actually CLICK on these things!! because if there weren't, then the ads wouldn't be there. i say it's really this very broken .01% of the population that's ruined it for the rest of us.
microsoft is partly to blame too, simply because microsoft is the devil...
thnx for sharing. i had to enable pop-ups to comment here. use Firefox. and make sure you have the latest Security updates from Microsoft.
also, not good to let everyone know your using "Shareaza."
Now looky here.
I downloaded FireFox like everyone recommended, and i found no reason not to use IE. In fact, even though i downloaded FireFox i prefer IE because i'm used to it and it supports all sites. FireFox, i found, wasn't really any different.
Anyway, i think we had a post like this awhile back, except it was telemarketers calling to sell a CallZapper type deal.
"i found, wasn't really any different."
Except it has a lot less security holes and you get a LOT less pop ups. I'm sure there is quite a few more advantages to Firefox, but those two are why I use it. And like you said, it isn't really different, which is a plus in my mind so you don't have to relearn how to use your browser.
I have the yahoo toolbar which blocks popups just fine (nearly forgot all about them existing). Whats funny is that yahoo blocks its own popups when someone views a geocities site!
@Bob...
How's this, for a timely example:
http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/new-exploit-blows-by-fully-patched.html
also:
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/
"Note that you can get infected if you visit a web site that has an image file containing the exploit. Internet Explorer users might automatically get infected. Firefox users can get infected if they decide to run or download the image file.
In our tests (under XP SP2) older versions of Firefox (1.0.4) defaulted to open WMF files with "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer", which is vulnerable. Newer versions (1.5) defaulted to open them with Windows Media Player, which is not vulnerable...but then again, Windows Media Player is not able to show WMF files at all so this might be a bug in Firefox. Opera 8.51 defaults to open WMF files with "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer" too. However, all versions of Firefox and Opera prompt the user first."
Read that again--you don't have to click a single thing to get infected if you're using IE. Opera and Firefox users aren't immune, but it at least takes SOME user interaction. Windows is broken, and IE is incredibly broken.
Same as above. Firefox will prevent many things from happening. And as to using shareaza, don't let other people see that. If someone can get a handle on your information, they can exploit that. Keep a copy of IE for the sites that still require it, but most now will support firefox. Mircosoft and McAfee are two that don't support firefox.
People who download things like that should be beaten.(and I am talking a serious prison riot style beating)* But as far as marketing goes, not broken, I'm sure they reel in the idiots
*This is in no way intended to advocate violence. This is sarcastic
It probably is spyware; one must download a free program to get rid of it. It's true that annoying people rarely gets your product downloaded, but those scams do work when the victim is an ignorant six-year-old kid; I've seen people who get their computer fixed every month on accound of spyware and such...;^)
To truly see a major difference between IE and FireFox:
1. Delete all cookies
2. Spend a standard length session online using IE
3. Count haw many cookies you have (each on is potentially an access point for spyware)
4. Repeat steps 1-3 using firefox.
that was the quick version. for the extended version:
1. Using a reputable anti-spyware program clean your computer.
2. spend 1 day surfing with IE
3. Clean your computer with the same program
4. spend 1 day surfing with Firefox
5. Clean your computer with the same program
The difference is astounding enough to convert even the most skeptical critic.
@Gamer
There is no need to keep IE on hand, if you can get Opera instead and set it to identify itself as IE
Are you sick of popups yet? Are you sick of popups yet? Are you sick of popups yet? Are you sick of popups yet? Are you sick of popups yet? Are you sick of popups yet?
1) Don't use Shareza. Or any other 'p2p' programs (Gnutella, ed2k, FastTrack, BitTorrent, etc.), especially on Windows, UNLESS it is used for legal purposes. Many files on p2p have viruses and spyware.
2) Don't use IE. IE is an old browser, with Trident, compared to Opera, Gecko and KHTML + variants.
3) If at all possible, don't use Widows. Unix has been a powerful secure system (Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X) since the 60's. Dual boot with Linux, use Mac, or wait until Apple switches to Intel which gives you the option of all 3 (triple boot Win/Lin/Mac) and maybe any X86 to run any of the 3.
yep, Linux & FireFox, a winning combonation. little security problems and few, if any, popups.
ttly more secure than Windoze & IE6.
& if u want its nothin 2 turn ur Linux workstation into a server, lol
I'd say go mac, even if u dont like firefox there's Safari that comes with mac which lets your browser fake that it's IE. Also @Nate the triple boot thing might not happen, they're just considering it.
somebody? anybody? im tired of hearing cookies talked about like theyre on the level of viruses and spyware. people use them to justify ie's brokenness (im not denying that). theyre the only product of nathan's xperiment. but ive never heard why theyre actually so bad. what harm can they really do?
I logged into my blogging site and got a string of popups like that using IE. But never found spyware.
I still dont understand what the big deal is about Firefox? I have firefox, Opera, and IE on my computer. But I think opera is very easy to use and has the least amount of security problems. And you can get it to pose as IE.
(dose anyone find it odd that i have a apple sticker on my PC computer?)
Also, look, the bottom, an internet explorer file "Could not find server", sounds like spyware/adware to me...
I'm going to answer gmangw's question about cookies being talked about like spyware. Basically, they are quite often spyware. IE allows websites to put "tracking cookies" on. (I think Mozilla does, too, but like Nathan proved, not nearly as much.) These track your web browsing and send the info to the company that made it.
Has anyone ever heard or seen the index.dat file? It can never be deleted under windows, except by special programs. And it has a list of all cookies you've ever had through IE.
To delete the index.dat file, simply restart windows in safe mode with command prompt and delete the file. Back when I browsed with IE, I did this weekly.
Some jack*ss wrote:
"Except it has a lot less security holes"
Did you ever consider that IE is attacked more than other browsers? Get the same people who find the security holes to attack another browser and they will find them. Do you really think that programmers of other browsers are THAT much more intelligent than the people writing IE that they cannot infiltrate Firefox?
"I'm sure there is quite a few more advantages to Firefox,"
Apparently, grammar check ARE not one of them.
In addition, also broken is the fact that it's a pop-up telling you how to stop pop-ups!
Linux has as many security vulnerabilities as Windows, according to CERT.
"It might not feel like it, but Windows suffered fewer security vulnerabilities than Linux and Unix during 2005.
Linux and Unix experienced more than three times as many reported security vulnerabilities than Windows, according to the mighty US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) annual year-end security index.
Windows experienced 812 reported operating system vulnerabilities for the period between January and December 2005, compared to 2,328 for Linux and Unix."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/05/windows_linux_unix_security_vulnerabilities/
Jay wrote, "I had to enable pop-ups to comment here."I didn't. And I'm using Internet Explorer, to boot.
Kinda remids me of a CIBC phish site. It went so far as to include the 'Anti Phish' warnings on the login page.
Broken.
to respond to all the previous comments:
1) I do not use IE on any regular basis, I have the full Mozilla Suite
2) I do not use Windoze with any regularity, I dual boot SuSE and XP but only use XP when it's required
3) The use of Shareaza was actually legal there
4) I did not have any substantial amount of spyware at that time as I had just scanned with 6 different programs
5) I am not in fact a retard, I am a professional computer technician and now more than I ever wanted to about cookies and all other things mentioned in the comments
6) The computer pictured is actually the one used by the rest of my family (who can't use Linux)
As another small point, those of you who keep babbling about Mozilla, look at the icons in the quick launch bar (far right icon)
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: Cafe Press dog t-shirt fitting instructions | Main | Next: M27 westbound sign in Hampshire, UK
can't say it isnt targeted, you're probably gonna get a lot of not brokens here. buying anything from a popup is insane anyway.
nice how that one ellipses wraps to another line.
Posted by: gmangw at December 29, 2005 12:30 AM