This is the sole reason Terminal 5 sucks! Courtesy of PaperGhost:

It’s weird that such a costly terminal, run by British Airways Plc, has such poor research. Oh well….

The title is making this teaser so big that you are almost expecting a result in my next blog post. The fact remains that this will take me sometime to research, however it will be awesome in it’s own right.

For now all I am going to add to this is: P2P sharing sites, and the like, better watch their backs as this Bruce Lee is coming for breakfast, lunch, dinner and a portion of supper!

Rember me blogging about SPYwareREMOVER? Well, now, after several weeks since that article, we have a someone posting replies about this in our forum.

Going by the tag: chris_2squared, just Google and you will get my drift!

OK, yesterday evening someone contacted us about something which concerned them. Especially yesterday of all days, valentine’s day, where a lot of money was to be earned.

… I want you to remember that before you move on. As it will play a part later on …

I will be focusing on 123greetings.com. This site is known to be bad for sometime now. SiteAdvisor classes it as a red/bad site and it’s not high on my choice of sites to go when it comes to online cards. In fact it’s no where to be seen on my choice list.

But imagine that you are a user with no computer experience. Go “uhhh” when you and your friends talk about a pop-up blocker and essentially haven’t got a clue when you hear the words “microsoft windows“. Essentially you wouldn’t know what WinFixer is or other rogues are either by that point.

Well imagine then how you go surfing online, because you want to send your loved one an e-Card as it’s valentine’s day. Nothing wrong with that at all. But then you get bombarded with pop-ups, flashing images and general stupid things you don’t want. Namely pop-ups for WinFixer. You’re so angry, you contact the site in question and get the following reply:

“… our business model requires that we generate revenue through the use of pop-up/pop-under advertising. Eventually our pop-up ads will go the way of other technologies that are no longer useful, but at this time they are the only way we can employ the people to make the cards in order to give them away free. Please visit our advertisers in order to keep our cards free.”

… and also …

“… as you find these pop-ups irritating, I suggest that you to use the software of your choice to block the pop-ups and make your card sending experience more enjoyable.”

So as we find these irritating and damn right annoying, we should all use software to block pop-ups? What about individuals below the age of eighteen who may not have a clue what this is? Or the elderly? Would you expect everyone to know this? Unlikely.

I have no problem with the use of adverts as long as they are clean and don’t scam computer users, or come popping-up as often as Rambo. However the adverts we encountered are not clean and certainly annoy the crap out of you. Even when I tested this myself, we had a whole lot of WinFixer adverts pop-up.

Going back to there being a lot of money to be earned on valentine’s day. The site in question is number one on Google for cards about yesterday’s occasion. So the potential revenue they went on about above will be a bucket full with extra visitors.

But that still doesn’t justify what the reply stated. To just “happily inform that complaining users should install a pop-up blocker“. Lazy tactics.

We’re waiting a reply from the site to see if they wish to clear things up. I’m not holding my breath though.

What does this highlight? Well the response from them highlights that revenue speaks louder than customers concerns. No matter who you are or how educated you think you are, telling you that “you need to get a pop-up blocker” is an easier solution to them rather than to investigate the offending advert. But we’ll keep an eye on this.

Has this been a concern of yours? What to get it of your chest? Chat about it here.

Update - 16th of Feb 2008 : An email has been received. Also, it appears that the script for WinFixer has been removed

If you’re all wondering where I’ve got too or why I haven’t posted recently. Well I have been very busy with offline projects. One of which I cannot go into.

One project I can go into was to do with Burstwick United. Our village was on high flood alert these last seven days and that took my time away being in meetings.

Normal service may be delayed for several more days or a week. If you stick around, you may find some guest bloggers rant and rave … fun!

… I’ll be kicking butt again!

I did say a week or so ago that I posted my last article for the year. However whilst I have been on holiday, several items have come to light which I will be going into once I am back from holiday. Probably near Sunday evening this weekend.

I may be on holiday, but suckers, I still have my eye on you!

How about this. DollerRevenue get fined by a Dutch regulator:

Telecoms watchdog OPTA has fined three Dutch firms and their two directors a total of €1m for the illegal distribution of spyware.It is the first time OPTA has imposed fines for spreading malicious Trojans, and has been called “one of the biggest cases of illegal software crime”, by the regulator.

In 2005, the two unnamed businessmen distributed software called DollarRevenue among millions of internet users. Approximately 450 million software files were installed on 22 million computers in the Netherlands and abroad.

The adware application silently downloaded advertising software and installed it to the computer without the user’s knowledge. DollarRevenue was also bundled with some ad-supported products and was extremely difficult to remove.

The software was also directly linked to certain botnet attacks, with over 7,700 machines hacked within 24 hours.

Finish reading the rest over at ChannelRegister.Co.Uk. Have an opinion? Tell us!

Ever since Chris Boyd reported about a site that pushed hackers, phishers and spammers, plus crackers, we have seen a strong fight from the kids behind them.

One of the individuals is called Helgi, if you do not know already. And he ran a forum that saw many posts with cracks, hacks and spamming tools.

Chris Boyd has for the last week or so been taking down the sites ran by Helgi via chatting to the host. And not in a hacking way. However there was some question why the sites appeared again. Are the hosts gaining an advantage from this forum?

Well me and Chris, and other individuals he asked, teamed up and this is what I got in their support chat:

(Click to Enlarge)

Chris has also published his screenshot he took, click here. We must thank Rahul for co-operating about this problem. However, if they appear again on the same service, more questions will be asked.

We didn’t use hacking methods to take down helgi’s hack-and-scream forum. Just used a bif ot common sense. Chat about this in our forum.