General Disclaimer. I need to let you know that much of the information and the points of view on page is from personal experience and are my points of view. There are many thousands of legitimate and honest vendors and sites out there. So, don’t take any of the information on this page to mean that All is Bad and Gloom and Doom abound. Pick your sites and subscriptions carefully. I simply put this information here to make you aware of my experiences and this is my opinion.
Okay her comes the big words: PORNOGRAPHIC SITES. I feel sorry for these site owners, they have all these neat sites, cool pictures and graphics and banners and ads and all kinds of information and content AND they spend millions of dollars promoting them.
I have absolutely no time nor do I have any inclination in dealing with people that use these sites. In fact, if I am working on a system that has (or had) porn on it, I leave!. In all fairness, I have no right to dictate what people can see, read, review or be interested in. I simply have no time for this and I believe that many of us don’t either AND the garbage they drop onto our systems is nonsense, not to mention viruses and parasitical entities. So, in my opinion, stay away from these jerk sites and your life will be much better!
First Time Connection. First time connections can be disastrous!!!! Yes, that’s right. Here’s the short on why. Simply put, we are eager to get on line, so we merrily plug our system into the InterWeb. Now several events occur (depending on the Windows OS - but essentially these steps occur):
So what does thePCdoctor suggest?
Free Software First and foremost and in most cases, there is no such thing as free. There is almost always a hook. Not only is there a hook, but often times it can’t be gotten rid of. Here’s an example, just recently I was scouring the InterWeb and found a link for something that I needed (a device driver). So I go to the site, start signing up for an account and the next thing I new, I was sent to a page that started asking me to Select Items (trips, cars, Phones) and all manner of nonsense. I had to go through 12 pages of this stuff. So I did and I used a “BLACK HOLE EMAIL ACCOUNT” for the subscription. Within 30 minutes, I had 9 “CLICK HERE TO WIN” links - yada, yada, yada. Then I received an email from this site that said - “Click to here activate your account”. Seemed reasonable, after all I do the same thing. Well, within 10 minutes I had 7 more “Click...”.
So finally, I get my download. I run the installer (after scanning for viruses etc) and all was well. The new driver was installed, my client was happy, then - BAM! We started getting all kinds of pop-ups for this and that and so on. It took about 30 minutes to rid the system of the ad-ware parasite. Finally got rid of it though. So what did I learn, SCAN BEFORE AND AFTER. See my AntiViral and Parasite page for more related information.
Nuking these items can be difficult and time consuming and it takes up valuable disk space that you can use for something more realistic and useful.
Promotional Web Sites. These are sites that you generally create an account with BUT you must go through page after page after page of “Subscribe To This and That!”. Essentially you are being added to Mailing Lists. Once you are on them, they are a nightmare to get rid of. Most sites allow you to “UNSUBSCRIBE”. That’s all good, but what is really happening. Well (not being jaded) what generally happens is that they tell you it will take 72 hours (that’s two days) to 1 week to be unsubscribed. Nonsense!!!
It sure didn’t take long to sign you up did it? I can tell you right now, unsubscribing is almost immediate, all one has to do is search the Database that contains your subscription information NUKE the entry. That, my friends is fundamentally it. These sites use mailers that essentially look you up in a database and send an AUTOMATED email.
What to do? Simply go to their web site, look for a Contact Us or Email Us or CORPORATE PAGE. Send them an email to have you removed IMMEDIATELY. Don’t be polite here, tell them NOW! The problem is, is that most sites SHARE email and subscription information. What they are really trying to tell you is that it may take so many number of hours or so many number of days to replicate the cancellation to their partners.
Tell a Friend Sites. Be careful here! I have no problems with a web site asking you to send a link or Tell a Friend about the site and it’s features or offerings, after all that’s how we all grow our business. What I would suggest is that you email your friends a link. Don’t use the web site's internal system to send a message, you have no idea what they are doing with the information. For example, on my site, I have a Contact Me page (and several links). When you click on them, I tell my page to make you use your Email Client, not a form. By doing so, I am trying to assure you that you are in control of who gets what. You can even cancel without sending if you think that there may be something suspicious. Think people, think.
Newsletters. These are always a good idea and they are intended to give you updates and information about a particular topic, item or promotion. Nothing wrong here, except that who knows what the bean counters and data analysts are doing with the information they get from the number of subscriptions? Have you ever wondered how a computer or software manufacturer knows how many people are interested in BRAND-X of their product? Well one way is to analyse the number of subscribers to a particular product on their site. They (we) can then use this to target an audience. Careful here as well, pick your newsletters carefully and be diligent. If you start receiving other offers of Newsletter or Subscription sign-ups, contact the new person or company that is offering the new subscription and ask them POINT BLANK - WHERE DID YOU GET MY EMAIL (or contact) INFORMATION FROM? Take appropriate and remedial action here.
Free Virus Scan Sites, I certainly am not going to imply that all sites are the same, but there a many sites out there that will offer to do a “Free Virus” scan of your system. I can almost guarantee that these sites will find a virus! You then download their software, install it and the next thing you know you have to install their browse search agent which almost always contain a BHO (Browser Helper Object). These BHO agents send all kinds of information back to the vendor and who knows where or what happens then. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT THEY ARE ALL BAD! Indeed, there are more honest and reliable sites than there are bad one. My advice here is - NOT! Use your own scanner and confirm the results of the free scan first. Next, visit Symantec’s or McAfee’s site (others are available) and see if they are reporting the Free Scanner’s Virus Identification as a legitimate virus (is there such a thing???) If you are interested in downloading their product, research first, download later.