Cranial Soup

Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation

2010-04-18T00:48:00.001-04:00

It all started with a simple innocent tweet. As Vivek Wadhwa was finishing up his excellent post on outsourcing he tweeted about it and I replied with a tweet of my own:

Note the URL I tweeted to him was shortened using the xrl.in service.

Now, Vivek is a TweetDeck user, and TweetDeck uses bit.ly to shorten links, even links that don't need shortening, like mine. So what do you think happened when he retweeted me and responded?

That's right, my already shortened link was reshortened with bit.ly.

Now what do you think you see when you click that link? The site I was trying to link to?

No, you see a warning page that implies that my original link leads to a malware, phishing, spam, or forgery site.

So my link to a reputable site is being called a bad site by bit.ly because I used a competing URL shortening service in my original tweet.

Note that there is an email link to report mistakes on bit.ly's warning page. What do you think happens when you click it and report a mistake? Do they check the link and remove the flag if the site is ok?

No, they don't. They told me to make a new bit.ly link and give it out to people, as if that would undo the damage that was done, change the links in other people's tweets, and prevent others from retweeting the bad reputation damaging bit.ly link that I never made in the first place.

Then they apologized and told me some day their service will be better, still not removing the reputation damaging flag from the link.

Can something like this affect you and your website? You bet it can.

If you or anyone else ever tweets a link to your site using a competing URL shortening service, and that link gets retweeted with any twitter client that shortens all URLs with bit.ly (whether they need it or not) the resulting link to your site will be flagged as a bad site.

What happens when the average person clicks that link and sees that warning page? Well, the average person believes it and won't visit your site. And if your name is on the original tweet, it will also be on the retweet, giving you the reputation of passing out links to bad sites.

Will a smart web savvy user believe the bit.ly warning page? Maybe, maybe not. But the average person probably will. As a developer I have seen the average person believe a lot of things that were not true, placing their complete trust in things like that bit.ly page and other false positives, and believing the worst, even spreading the word about it as if it were the truth, telling others that a website or application was harmful. They think that companies don't do things like this without ironclad proof, so they believe every word of it.

What alarms me the most is the attitude of bit.ly with regards to this problem and how they refuse to remove the flag from innocent links. They don't care if your reputation is damaged.

And it is in the best interest of bit.ly not to fix the problem, since it makes more people use their service, worried that if they use another service and get retweeted, they could end up with a reputation damaging link to their site. So this whole problem serves to make more people use bit.ly, out of fear, rather than convenience or because they have a better service.

I am not a bit.ly user because it is not convenient for me. I have a browser plugin that uses xrl.in, that with a single click of a button, copies the shortened link to whatever page I am on to my clipboard, ready to paste anywhere I want.

Other links in the stuff I tweet use ff.im, because they are cross-posts from friendfeed. I was pretty sure if I post something on friendfeed, cross-posted to twitter and it gets retweeted, reshortened with bit.ly, it will result in one of those warning pages, too.

But I was wrong, it doesn't. In fact, there are a few other shorteners that don't get warning pages either, probably because they are so popular that they would get noticed pretty quick if bit.ly decided to pick on them.

Bit.ly does white list the following shorteners:

ff.im
youtu.be
goo.gl

There is no reason why bit.ly can't white list the rest of the popular shorteners if they can white list those. But those others are competing services and they don't feel like being nice guys about it. They would rather ruin the reputations of innocent people like you and me.

So what can you do to ensure you won't become a victim of bit.ly's "bad site" interstitial page?

There are only 2 things you can do:

1. Always use bit.ly to shorten your links and make sure everyone else in the world does too. (highly impractical, because you can't control what other people do.)

2. Let bit.ly know this is unacceptable. Tell them to play fair and white list the other shorteners. The choice of url shortener you use should be yours and not theirs, and you should not be punished with a reputation damaging warning page because you use a competing service. (easy to do)

Send them an email: support@bit.ly
Tweet them: @bitly
Spread the word by tweeting this post
Share this post on social networking sites
Blog about it
Tell your friends

Don't stop making noise about this till bit.ly stops damaging the reputations of innocent people.

UPDATE May 8, 2010: Bit.ly has changed their interstitial page, slightly. Instead of the top banner saying "WARNING - visiting this website may harm your computer" it now says "Stop - there might be a problem with the requested link"

But it goes on to say

Some URL-shorteners re-use their links, so bit.ly can't guarantee the validity of this link.

Some URL-shorteners allow their links to be edited, so bit.ly can't tell where this link will lead you.

Spam and malware is very often propagated by exploiting these loopholes, neither of which bit.ly allows for.

The link you requested may contain inappropriate content, or even spam or malicious code that could be downloaded to your computer without your consent, or may be a forgery or imitation of another website, designed to trick users into sharing personal or financial information.

I still consider this unacceptable. If bit.ly can detect a shortened link at the time someone clicks, they can detect it at the time someone submits it for shortening, and just not allow it. That page is completely unnecessary and can still be damaging to someone's reputation.

Come on, bit.ly, just do the right thing! How hard is it to just not reshorten?

Fix: Can’t access HTML of my template after adding a frame busting script

2009-04-05T19:42:00.001-04:00

You do not want to use a frame busting script in the template of a Blogger based blog.

It will disable your ability to use the upper toolbar in the layouts mode, and you will not be able to access the HTML of your template without a bit of "URL hacking" to get to it.

If you have added it and can't access the HTML of your template, just change the layout URL, replacing the word "display" with "html".

Example:

change this: http://www.blogger.com/display?blogID=12345678
to this: http://www.blogger.com/html?blogID=12345678

Now you can find and remove the frame busting script and everything will work normal again.

Fix Firefox Not Remembering to Keep You Logged Into Sites

2009-03-31T18:50:00.001-04:00

The Problem:

Lately, I have been hearing a lot of complaints from people that Firefox does not remember their preferences to stay logged into sites, after they close Firefox and run it again.

The Cause:

The cookie database file is corrupted.

The Fix:

WARNING: This will log you out of ALL sites till you log into them again!

You may also lose certain site preferences that depend on cookies. You may have to configure those again. These would not be settings that are stored on the site's server. They would be settings specific to your PC and not set if you used the same site from another computer. While it might be a bit of a bother to reconfigure them, it's not a common thing to store site preferences this way and it should only affect a very small number of sites, if any at all.

The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Google search. If you have configured it to turn safe search off for images, set it to show more than 10 results per page, or to open links in a new tab or window, you will have to set it again.

You will not lose any saved password information stored in the password manager. You will only lose all of your cookies.

Ready?

Make sure Firefox is closed.
Go here:
- On 2k/XP: C:\Documents and Settings\(your name)\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
- On Vista/Win7: C:\Users\(your name)\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
- On Mac OS X: ~/Library/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/ or ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/
- On UNIX/Linux: ~/.mozilla/firefox/
In that folder you will find a folder that has a bunch of random letters & numbers for a name and ends with ".default".
Open that folder and find the file named "cookies.sqlite".
Delete "cookies.sqlite".
Run Firefox and log into all your sites again.

Firefox will create a new cookies.sqlite file with the necessary info and you shouldn't have a problem any more.

It was a "Fizzbin" kind of day today.

2009-03-25T14:55:00.001-04:00

I have a very high tolerance for stupidity when helping other people. I can guide even the the most brain dead along, explaining things 55 billion different ways till it clicks in their heads, without losing my patience.

But I have no tolerance for incompetence when I am forced to deal with a complete idiot, when calling a company with a support issue.

I had the worst tech support experience of my life with Verizon, today.

First, my internet went down at about 1:30 AM. I did the usual rebooting my router and PC, making sure my daughter's laptop was turned off (it was) before calling to complain, yet again. This has become a ritual I have had to perform an uncountable number of times since I ordered my DSL speed upgrade back in early December. I have been complaining about the flaky connection for months, with Verizon not doing a damn useful thing to fix the issue, which they have insisted is on their end and their fault, each time telling me they have fixed it and they really haven't.

Had I known that ordering an upgrade was going to give me such a flaky connection and crappy tech support at twice the price, I would have stuck with the slower stable connection and paid less, and kept more of my sanity.

So, I called Verizon and as normal, had to go through their automated menu crap and get put on hold to wait for a human. This time, I was on hold for more than an hour and a half.

Then someone finally picked up the line, and it turned out to be the most incompetent idiot I have ever come across, at any ISP, beating even the AOL guy from some 3rd world country that told me to make a backup of all my husband's emails (since he had the smallest amount), delete the originals, and replace them with the backup copy, in order to fix my dialup. And when it comes to incompetence, that AOL guy is a hard one to beat.

The Verizon nitwit I had to deal with today, beat all of the AOL nitwit techies I have ever had to deal with, combined.

After doing a line test and saying that the problem wasn't on their end, and checking router/modem settings, and making me tell her what username I was using, and making me disconnect /reconnect just to make sure I was using the right password for that username, she finally "knew" what the issue was...

She seemed to think that Internet Explorer was broken, and because all applications that use the internet do it through Internet Explorer, if Internet Explorer is broken, then Firefox, Chrome, K-Meleon, Opera, and every other browser will not work...and she doesn't think there is such thing as non-browser applications like XChat, Filezilla, GTalk, etc and insisted they all use IE to connect to the internet too, and none of them will work, because IE is broken. Yes, she told me this crazy load of crap.

And how did she verify and make a final determination that IE was the problem? Because she had me run it and without typing in any URL, she wanted me to tell her what the error message was. There was no error message, because I don't have a home page set. When I run it, it's blank. That's the way it's supposed to be. But nothing I could say would convince her otherwise, that a blank page when you open IE is normal when you don't have a home page set. To her a blank page with no error message is positive proof that IE is broken.

Now let me tell you how she said my Internet Explorer got "broken" while I wasn't even running a browser, and certainly not IE. She seems to think that while I was typing in XChat, some virus forced its way onto my machine and broke my IE so it is blank and doesn't give an error message, and that is why my internet does not work.

So I guess that means that at the exact same time, that virus also managed to force its way onto my daughter's laptop and break her IE, too...while her laptop was shut off, since her internet wasn't working either? And that sneaky virus did it to my PDA too?

Now I haven't even told you about the "My Computer" fiasco yet.

While trying to "help" me, she tells me to go to "My Computer", right click and go to "My Computer". Now if you have a desktop icon for "My Computer", right click it and see if it has an entry on the menu that says "My Computer". You won't find one.

I asked her to confirm this, that she wanted me to right click "My Computer" and select "My Computer" from the menu. She said yes. I told her it wasn't on my menu, and maybe she meant something else, like "Properties", perhaps? She insisted that wasn't it.

She then told me to go to "Start" and then click "My Computer". Sorry, but that isn't an entry at the root of any Start menu in Windows XP unless someone adds it there themselves, and I sure didn't add it to mine.

Then she had me look in "My Documents" and "Control Panel" for "My Computer". Then had me go to Start, Run, and type in "My Computer" (try it, it's fun!). I suspected she may have wanted me to go to "System Properties", but she kept insisting that wasn't it and we needed to find this elusive "My Computer" entry that was missing from all my menus.

She wouldn't let me speak to her supervisor, or another techie that actually had half a brain, and ended up hanging up on me when I totally lost my patience with her. I probably would have hung up on her long before that, if it wasn't for the fact I didn't feel like waiting on hold for another two hours.

When I called back and went through the automated crap again, before placing me on hold I got a recording that said that Verizon was having issues in my area code and there could be outages for the next 6 hours and if I still wanted to speak to one of their techies, to hang on, otherwise hang up.

For some reason, the nitwit I had talked to earlier didn't know about the issues on their end, as she kept insisting there was no problem on their end, nothing wrong with my modem/router, and that my IE was broken on every computer in my house.

Scott Hanselman was right...there really should be a magic word like "Fizzbin" that you can say when you call tech support, so they don't treat you like you are an idiot...or force you talk to one of theirs.

AutoHotkey is NOT a Virus, Worm, or Trojan!

2008-12-06T13:00:00.003-05:00

I am so sick and tired of irresponsible antivirus companies unfairly flagging compiled AutoHotkey (AHK) scripts as viruses, trojans, and worms.

AutoHotkey is a free, open source scripting language, just as much as Perl, Python, Ruby, or JavaScript is a scripting language.

There is nothing wrong with the language itself, nor is there anything wrong with most scripts written in it. A lot of really awesome, useful, Windows utilities have been developed in AutoHotkey.

The language is powerful, easy to learn, enables you to write Windows utilities very quickly, and you can compile them to .exe and distribute them to others that don't have AutoHotkey installed, or you can give them the source script (.ahk) and they can run that if they do have it installed.

The problem is that there are idiots that will write malware in AHK, just as there are idiots that will write malware in any other programming language. You can't blame the language for this. And you can't blame all the developers that use the language, either.

But that is exactly what the antivirus companies are doing. They have decided that if a single person writes and compiles malware in AHK, then all compiled AHK scripts are malware. This results in tons of false positives, ruined reputations of innocent programmers, and a mistrust in AHK applications by the general public.

Developers have repeatedly contacted antivirus companies and complained, which after enough outcry from programmers and the public will result in them fixing the problem with the false positives. That is until a new version of AutoHotkey is released. Then the antivirus vendors get amnesia and forget that AutoHotkey is a language again, and flag all utilities made with it as malware, once again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

This has been going on for a few years now and it's a viscous cycle that needs to stop.

I have written utilities that I would love to distribute to the public, with the source code, but I am afraid of putting them on my website, out of fear that my reputation will be destroyed by the stupidity of the antivirus companies.

This is unacceptable behavior on their part. Can you imagine if these antivirus companies decided to pick on another programming language and did the same thing they do to AutoHotkey? Can you imagine if every six months they decided that all applications written in C/C++ were malware? Or anything compiled with Microsoft's Visual Studio was malware? How about if they decided that all JavaScript was malware? You wouldn't be able to load most web pages or run most of your software. If they did that, those antivirus companies would all be out of business very quickly.

But that is exactly what they are doing. And AHK is the language they are picking on.

I am asking all developers and AHK users to join an organized effort to take the bull by the horns and petition the antivirus companies to stop the unfair treatment of our software.

My #1 Reason for Hating Digg

2008-07-24T14:09:00.009-04:00

Aside from all that infects Digg and makes it such trash, such as the Super Digger cartels that bury the good stuff and digg the crappy stuff without even reading it, the fact anything with "Google", "Digg", "iPhone", or "Linux" in the headline automatically makes it to the front page (even if it isn't news worthy), and the comments that seem like they were written by a gang of uneducated pre-teen delinquents that live under a bridge...there is one thing above all that really aggrivates me to no end.

THE BLOAT!

The site is the most unusable piece of trash that has ever been coded. Worse than AOL webmail, the latest version of GMail, Yahoo webmail, Neopets, and FeedBurner, combined.

It should not take 20 minutes to log into a site. One should not receive a billion "unresponsive script" warnings per page. It should not take an hour to switch tabs. Someone needs to dig a hole and bury that site before I lose my mind. I am so aggrivated right now that all the Kitaro in the world could not calm me down.

Every time I think about giving Digg another chance, I end up regretting it and shaking with frustration. I am a very patient person, but I am not THAT patient.

I seriously hope that if Google does buy Digg, that they don't turn their search engine into a bloated mess while they add Digg buttons to all their search results. My poor little computer and I wouldn't be able to handle it, and in my opinion, we shouldn't have to.

I have had it! Enough is enough! I will never load another page from Digg in any browser, on any PC, for as long as I live...unless someone can direct me to a Digg Lite that isn't loaded with all the bloated crap.

I don't care if I can vote or comment on stuff, or not. I really am not feeling in a very social mood right now, any way.

I just want a list of the headlines, descriptions, and direct links to all the articles that have been submitted in the upcoming stories section. I would like to find some interesting stuff to read that isn't already plastered all over every blog & splog in creation.

I don't want the front page crap. I would rather have all the hidden gems that never have a fair shot of making it to the front page.

Does such a thing even exist?

If it does, give me a link, please!

UPDATE 08-04-2008: I have found not one, but two alternatives to the main bloated Digg site. Please see my article titled "Digg, Digg Lite, Digg Ultra Lite" on my Snailware blog.

PRODUCT RECALL: Dirt Devil Vacuum Accessory Tools

2008-07-23T18:54:00.005-04:00

If you own a Dirt Devel vacuum with "Power Brush" attachment tools, please stop using them until you check below to see if yours is on the recall list.

TTI Floor Care North America, of Glenwillow, Ohio has recalled about 987,000 Dirt Devil power tools, after receiving 140 reports of incidents involving the recalled vacuum tool, including 12 reports of injuries. Those consumers reported minor eye or skin injuries and one thumb injury.

Plastic pieces inside the vacuum tool can break apart and be ejected, posing a laceration hazard to consumers.

The recalled Dirt Devil Turbo Tool/Power Brush attachment was sold as an accessory with the following Dirt Devil vacuum models.

Only the accessories with date codes J7060 through J7365 and have a C-clip connector are affected by this recall. The date code is located on the underside of the accessory tool.

The Turbo Tool/Power Brush tools are about 6.5 inches long by about 5 inches wide and come in assorted colors that match the color of the vacuum. The housing of the tool was made in clear, red, green, or light blue with clear, light blue, dark blue, red, purple, or black turbine fans with matching brush rolls.

Dirt Devil Vacuum Models affected:

Reaction: M110000, M110000HD, M110001B, M110002, M110003, M110006, M110008, M110008CA, M110009
Purpose for Pets: M140000, M140000CA
Ultra Swivel Glide: M086020
Envision Wide Glide: M086700WCA, M086710
Swerve: M086030, M086030CA
Action Upright: M110020CAB
Royal Commercial: RY6100

Model and Date Code Location:

They were sold at mass merchandisers, home improvement stores, and other retail stores nationwide in the US, from April 2007 through April 2008, for between $60 and $170 for the vacuum cleaner, which included the accessory tools.

If you own one of these, you should stop using the recalled Dirt Devil accessory tool immediately and contact the company to receive a free repair kit.

For additional information, contact TTI Floor Care at (800) 245-2296 between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, or visit the company's website at www.dirtdevilturbotool.com

Bloggers With Comment Forms That Suck a Chunk of Your Life Into a Black Hole

2008-07-15T01:57:00.006-04:00

Listen up, John Chow, Jack Humphrey, Matthew Henrickson, Andy Beard, and the rest of you lazy and/or inept bloggers out there:

I am tired of wasting my time on broken comment forms, screwball captchas, lazy moderation, and bad site design.

Too many times in the past 2 weeks, I have tried to make comments on blogs that ended up sucked into cyberspace and never making it to its destination, which is the post in which I was commenting on.

On three blogs, after taking the time to formulate an informative, relevant, quality comment (one of them was at least an hour of work), it was just sucked away after clicking the submit button, with no indication that it made it to where it was supposed to go, or it being held for moderation, or anything else. Will I ever grace those blogs with another comment again? No!

On another blog, after almost the same amount of work and hitting the submit button, I was informed that commenting on that post was closed. Why was there a comment form then? And why was there no visible indication that commenting was closed that I could see, before I wasted my time putting together a comment? Will I ever grace that blog with another comment? No!

On another blog, after I took the time to make a comment thanking the blogger for his post and tell him how useful it was to me and why, and how I was going to send him some traffic because it was that damn good, his captcha informs me that I must have flunked math in school because 4+3 does not equal 7. Don't insult me like that. I try to compliment you and thank you, and this is the thanks I get? A screwball captcha that calls me an idiot? Will I ever comment on your blog again? No!

On another two blogs, my comment was being held for moderation. Now I can understand the need to do that in order to keep spammers at bay, but don't you think you should check your queue to see if any comments were made, at least once a week, if not more often? Maybe even check it when you are making a new post, at least. Will I be commenting on those blogs again? No!

I am tired of wasting chunks of my life trying to comment unsucessfully on your blogs.

So to all you bloggers out there, please check to make sure your comment forms and captchas work, when commenting is closed that it is visibly closed to your visitors before they waste their time (remove the form if possible), if comments are being held for moderation that commentors are told this, and process your comment moderation queues on a regular basis!

And if you have no clue what you are doing or how to fix things, ask someone to help you!

EntreCard Needs Bigger Better Whips

2008-05-09T13:25:00.005-04:00

What is the deal with EntreCard's signup form?

I have been trying to create an account for at least a week. Every time I hit the submit button on the signup page, I get this error:

Is there some trick to getting an account that I do not know about? Is this some sort of exclusive club and "certain people" are not welcome to register?

This is not a problem affecting a certain particular browser, as I have tried with more than one, my usual K-Meleon and I even brushed the dust off of IE and tried. No luck.

Checking through their forums to see if the problem has been reported (and what the official word on when it will be fixed) doesn't help. The only issues reported are from people that have accounts already. And there is no way for me to report the issue without having an account...and I can't get one! If I could get one, there would be no issue to report.

Maybe one of you guys that has an EntreCard account could post on their support forum and bring some attention to my post here.

How I feel right now

2008-03-14T16:56:00.004-04:00

The good pc has been down for about 10 days and it doesn't look like it will be coming back. I don't have the money or the skills or the luck needed to fix it, nor can I afford to replace it.

It feels just like 2003 all over again, only this time I won't allow myself to be stuck using an old P1 with WinME for 2-3 years, watching the world pass me by, feeling hopeless, powerless, pathetic...while people make jokes and laugh at me.

No, this time I will shut it down and walk away.

I can't go through that again. I just can't.

I am sorry.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go mourn the death of one of my best friends, the loss of much that I considered precious, and the destruction of all my hopes, plans, & dreams.