Cranial Soup

Creepy Service Wants Everyone That Can See Your License Plate to Be Able to Send You Unsolicited Text Messages

2011-02-21T09:31:00.001-05:00

Bump.com hopes that this video entices you to sign up for their service, tying your cell phone number to your vehicle's license plate. Please don't be stupid enough to fall for it.

First of all, if you see a baby left alone in a car, you should call the police...not send a text message to the parent guilty of child neglect that is putting that baby's life in danger.

And sending a text to the jerk in front of you to give him a piece of your mind for his bad driving is a really BAD idea. It just encourages road rage, which can have deadly consequences.

Reporting a break-in in progress to the owner of a vehicle instead of snapping a photo of the criminal & calling the police, can result in the possible injury or death of the owner of that vehicle if they should come running out and confront the criminal. You do not know if they are armed and dangerous.

And marketing? That's not marketing...that's spamming. It won't take long before you decide to change your phone number and/or plates, if this crap becomes popular. You'll have to, to get any kind of peace. It won't take very long for someone to start collecting license plate numbers and selling them to the highest bidder. The potential for abuse here is seriously high...worse than email because a license plate number is a whole lot easier to get than an email address.

If you want everyone in the world to be able to send you any kind of message they please, whenever they want, including some of the most vulgar filth imaginable, then just put your cell phone number on a bumper sticker and/or wear it on a T-shirt...or perhaps write it on the wall of a public bathroom. (no, I don't think you'd really want to do that, but using BUMP is just about the same thing.)

Finally, as Gail Gardner from Growmap pointed out, this service conditions people to spy on their neighbors and complete strangers, eroding both our privacy and freedom.

OpenCandy: A New Kind of Adware/Spyware

2009-05-13T00:34:00.014-04:00

They claim to be doing something noble, but the only thing sweet about OpenCandy is the sales pitch to naive developers that might just fall for it, tricking them into thinking it is somehow different than the typical common adware/spyware.

A lot of developers do seem to be biting the bait, but no matter how you slice it, it's still adware/spyware, and to me it stinks worse than the old fashioned kind.

In OpenCandy's own words, this is what they do:

Recommendations are made to users during the installation process. Utilizing the install process creates a user-friendly experience and offers optimal engagement for making a software recommendation. The user is presented with a screen that describes the recommendation, at which time they may choose to install the recommended software.

That makes it adware!

We then provide analytics back to the creators, so they can see how their software and recommendations are performing. This way they can better understand how to build and recommend great applications.

That makes it spyware!

We've also provided our technology as a platform to a handful of software creators who are utilizing an offer screen during the install process as an advertising unit. Some creators are already monetizing their distribution by offering apps like browser toolbars, so we're helping them improve their user experience and optimize the effectiveness of their offers.

That makes it your typical spyware/adware we have always known.

Actually, this is much worse, because instead of big companies like Sun & Opera making some software and offering it for free and advertising Yahoo's toolbar in the installer, we have a lazy predator company backed by venture capitalists that doesn't want to bother with or take the risk in developing a ton of software of their own to push toolbars to make their millions. They want to use the software of naive developers to accomplish it.

An ad is an ad, and to me there is no difference.

There is no difference between showing an ad for some other product by some other developer in the installer of my software, no matter how much I might even like that software myself, and popping up an ad for CocaCola or Viagra on a user's screen during the install process.

Do you remember what you parents told you about not taking candy from strangers and why? Well, these guys are not really strangers, they are known preditors. The founders of OpenCandy are the same guys responsible for the inclusion of the spyware/adware in DivX.

Now, before you call me a hypocrite for bashing adware installers while having ads on my blog, let me explain the difference:

Any visitor to my blog can turn off Javascript and not be exposed to ads. Or they can use a noscript plugin, or an ad blocker. They have that choice before they land on my site.

I even offer an ad-free RSS feed.

If I want to recommend software to my users, I put it on a separate page of my site and not in my software or installers.

When the ads are in an installer, the user can't install the software without seeing the ads. They have no real choice. That's the difference. And I seriously doubt that developers are going to offer two different installers and give users the option to see or not see ads or be exposed to spyware.

So now that I have told you what I think, what is your opinion on OpenCandy, as either a software user or developer (or both)?

UPDATE Saturday, February 19, 2011:
The following applications have been found to install OpenCandy:

aMSN
Any Video Converter (last freeware, OpenCandy free version 1.21 available here)
ApexDC++
ATI Tray Tools
aTube Catcher
CDBurnerXP Pro
CrystalDiskInfo
DarkWave Studio
Dexclock
DoubleTwist
Driver Sweeper
Duplicate Cleaner
DVDVideoSoft products
eRightSoft products,including Super
ExtractNow
FL Studio
Free YouTube Downloader
Frostwire
IE7Pro
Image Tuner
IZArc
kantaris
Media Info
MediaCoder
MediaInfo
mIRC
Miro
Office 2010 Trial Extender
Orbit Downloader
PrimoPDF
PSP Video
RedKawa
SIW
Soldat
Startup Manager
StepMania
Super Simple Photo Resizer
TechTracker
Trillian Astra
True Burner
Unlocker
Veoh Web Player
Videora
Vistaglazz
WebShot
Winamp
WinSCP
Xfire

This is not an exhaustive all inclusive list. This is just what I have found with a quick Google search. If you know of any other applications that should be added to this list, leave a comment and let me know.

Online Privacy Policy Generator

2007-10-11T13:41:00.002-04:00

Constructing a privacy policy for your website can be a complicated task, but it doesn't have to be any more.

With this generator it is as easy as checking off some boxes and filling in some blanks.

They give you the choice between generating an HTML page which you can just save, or emailing you an HTML or plain text copy.

http://www.the-dma.org/privacy/creating.shtml