Shoutbox

CookieRevised,

Thank you very much for the feedback. I appreciate it.

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
Errrr.... hence the term 'sponsor' and 'ads'...
By your definition, everybody who has ads on their webpage are being dishonest and/or stealing money? Including the children who let their parents and family sponsor them per km they run in that yearly schoolrun? etc... Their is absolutely nothing dishonest about earning money via sponsors.

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Fair point, but I did not claim all who use sponsors or ads are dishonest. The original comment was that he is making "honest money" from his "own creation." All I said was that he is not making money from his creation, but rather, from a sponsor.

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Originally posted by screen317
Errr (again).... It is not because somebody does not read a, VERY visible, mandatory* choice that the author is being dishonest. Nobody is tricked here! If people don't care to read what they install then it is they who need to change their habits. In the real world you also don't go buying and signing stuff without first reading stuff. And before you reply with "but the small print...": it is very clearly stated in 'normal' print, before the EULA (aka small print), what the optional sponsor is and will do. This is a far more honest way of using a sponsor than most other programs on the net!!!!!

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I understand that it is clear as day. You and I would not install it because we are both conscious about what we install. It is very clear exactly what is going to be installed, for those of us who read the EULA (and the text that appears before the EULA). Unfortunately, in the real world, people do sign for things they don't quite comprehend. It's why people sign up for credit cards and accumulate debts of thousands of dollars, in addition to other similar cases. The population we live with is not the brightest, I'm afraid. However...

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Nope it is not, as it is VERY clearly explained on that same page what is being installed though. There is no trickery involved here. Trickery is when there is no clear and very visible text explaning what is being installed.

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...it does not matter how clearly it is explained, people are still going to ignorantly click "I accept." No one (that I've met) wants the sponsor software. If people wanted it, they would not come to our forums and complain about popups. Clearly something is not right here if people who do not want the sponsor software are still installing it (by their choice).

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In some circumstances (with real malware) you are correct, but in this case you do far more 'damage' using 3rd party tools since there is not a single 3rd party application which properly uninstalls the optional ad sponsor from C2Media which is/was bundled with Plus!. Not even apps like Spybot S&D, Hijackthis, etc! They all leave traces behind and/or even damage the uninstaller.

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Fortunately, we use programs which do a better job than HijackThis and Spybot S&D, otherwise you would be right in that they do not do a thorough job of removing the sponsor.

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Your policy, as a decent PC-repair dude, should be: Check the official documentation and/or official forums and/or other official knowledge bases first, where people base their stuff on facts, not on hear-say or their own incompetents. And use a virtual machine to check if the uninstaller works as it should be for yourself. And if so, use the provided uninstaller! Otherwise, and I am sorry to say, I don't see you as a real PC-repair dude who knows what he is talking about, but instead simply bases his 'knowledge' on hear-say and other (wrong) assumptions.

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Yes that is absolutely right; checking the documentation should be priority. However, myself and my colleagues are not PC-repair professionals. We are volunteers who devote what spare time we have to PC repair. We do not have infinite time to investigate every document and forum for every suspect program in existence. It just isn't feasible. We do what we can to solve the problems of the people who come to us. We have (hidden) discussions from 2004 regarding LOP.com malware and its association with Messenger Plus! Yes, uninstalling it removes it. It's been proven through plenty of testing, regardless of how much or how little we may trust the makers of that.



Since that is the case though, why do people still come to our forums and request assistance with it? I suppose this is my ultimate question and hope:

Would it be at all possible for that piece of information (that the sponsor can be uninstalled) to be displayed somewhere more clearly and more obviously, for the less clever among us on the Internet?

Thank you for your post, Jesus.

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Originally posted by Jesus
You called this the exploitation of ignorance, but I ask you now, who's at fault here? Is it the developer who is giving the user an obvious choice on whether or not to support the software or is it the user who is too ignorant (or lazy) to actually read what he's agreeing on?

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Taking advantage of ignorant/lazy individuals (or anyone) is called exploitation.

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Anyway, there have been quite a few complaints like yours before. As SonicSam pointed out earlier in this thread, the LOP sponsor is being phased out (or has already been phased out, I'm not sure on that) right now, so less and less people should have problems with it.

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If this is true, that is splendid news and I will forward it to my colleagues. Could you please provide a reference so I can verify for them?

Edit: I did see SonicSam's post (thanks SonicSam), but I don't see a reference behind it, and the installation I just did on Windows 2000 didn't offer Ask Toolbar.

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Originally posted by screen317
Since that is the case though, why do people still come to our forums and request assistance with it? I suppose this is my ultimate question

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Because, as you said, there are unfortunatly still be people who don't read stuff when they install programs.

Such people come to our forums too, and all we can teach them (as that is our duty/responsebility at that point) is to use the included uninstaller just like you logically would do with any other software, and not to trust upon 3rd party apps or hear-say for stuff like this. And also tell them to read things before they install stuff.

And that's what we expect and hope other 'helpers' on other forums will say and do too.

Unfortunatly, there are still a lot of 'helpers' on other forums which don't know what they're talking about and simply base their stuff on other hear-say and false assumptions and telling people to do the wrong things. And then those unfortunate people sometimes come here with their problems asking for help, or worse, starting insulting us.

Believe me, 'helpers' from other forums asking for a clarification here like you did is a very extremely rare thing.

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Originally posted by screen317
and hope:
Would it be at all possible for that piece of information (that the sponsor can be uninstalled) to be displayed somewhere more clearly and more obviously, for the less clever among us on the Internet?

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Has been discussed also though. In any case, it has always been mentionned on that very same page in the install wizard:

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from the install wizard
The sponsor can be removed at any time by launching the uninstaller of Messenger Plus! Live.

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There is not much more Patchou can do though. Because people who don't read anything, will not read a big red flashing banner either so to speak.

Anyways, as mentionned earlier by SonicSam, the C2Media* sponsor is slowly being phased out in favor of another sponsor, Ask.com, which only changes your homepage and/or main search engine and is even easier to uninstall. So problems with the C2Media sponsor should occur less and less frequently anyways.

* "Lop" doesn't exit anymore since a very very very long time.

Anyways, if it all was so dishonest, then Plus! wouldn't be the software it is today; still being used, after 8 years, by millions of people around the world and still growing in numbers. Also, if Patchou was the greedy man that some people like to call him, then he wouldn't program the installer like he programmed it, and wouldn't give hundreds of prizes away every year or so.
Dishonest software has a big tendency to die out rather quickly....

screen317, if you're saying that people don't read and just press "I accept," how would you word it so that they wouldn't click "I accept?"

"I do not accept the refusal to install the sponsor?"....