Porter’s Preface to 180 Solutions Response & Some Software Philosophy

I know many of you have been waiting patiently for the 180solution’s response to a few of my questions I have asked them about their practices both past and current. I will provide a bit of background for those new to this saga and my rationale for reaching out to 180solutions on a blogging community about business rather than my security firm’s site. I felt this might be a good neutral ground where they could speak their mind publicly and while the issues are all about security and privacy the bottom line here is business.

A handful of adware companies are changing some of their practices (or seem to be) by making changes to their software and distribution practices and some are launching legal offensives possibly bringing them dangerously close to anti-SLAPP legislation.

This is something I think we might soon see. While such sanctions aren’t generally available, they are supposed to be granted where required by public policy. Given the great importance of supporting and defending those who try to stop spyware (no matter how you define it because we have yet to get a good legal definition), it is logical we might find courts willing to grant sanctions in such cases.

Reference these two URLS for some background information.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cacodes/ccp/425.10-425.16.html
and
http://www.thefirstamendment.org/antislappresourcecenter.html

I certainly don’t mean this in context with 180solutions who have been nothing but cordial in our dialogue but I find it worthy to mention given the intensity of the assault on consumer’s rights to audit their machines and netizens right to express their opinions on issues of such public importance.

With that said let me move on to the reasons for this dialogue and some basic philosophy at how we look at computer resources.

I initially started dialogue with 180solutions when they politely questioned why we targeted their applications in our software. As of yet I could not find a venue where I could publicly hear their side of the story without finding dialogue that wasn’t laced with acid-style attacks or where the dialogue was derailed with war-like behavior (warranted or not) or so filled with tech-speak it was beyond the average marketer or consumer. With this in mind I decided to reach out to 180solutions and ask them if they would agree to a basic but tough interview for the marketing and consumer community. While my primary work is at XBlock Systems, I do comment frequently on the online business world as a co-founder of the Revenews community and given the very complex economics behind consumerware or adware I feel it is appropriate.

I do have a lot more questions I want to ask 180 but I felt an even dozen was a good starting point and hopefully we can continue from here or other analysts can pick up the torch and engage them in more dialogue.

Another reason I specifically selected 180solutions was because of an excellent blog entry by one of my competitors, Sunbelt Software. I must give credit where credit is due and Sunbelt has been doing a stellar job in providing detailed information about the activities of various companies not just 180solutions. I salute Sunbelt and their C.E.O., Alex Eckelberry, on a job well done with such detailed research. As I well know this type of research takes a lot of time, effort and not to mention technical acumen. I was specifically intrigued by a white paper found on their blog site which has since been taken down after a request by 180. Hopefully this whitepaper will return and perhaps with commentary from 180solutions.

In my dialogue with 180solutions (Thanks to 180 staffers Cory and Brian for your persistence.) I made it very clear I have been a harsh critic of 180solutions (as I have of most adware) in the past, primarily because of issues of distribution among other things.

But to make it fair in my proposal I would allow them to answer the questions and I would turn off the commenting section of my blog and refrain from making my own comments to their answers because my company produces an application that detects the presence of various adware, keyloggers and consumerware. Our software offers consumers a choice to keep or remove this software and for the record we don’t even have a category called “spyware”.

Important Note: It is our mission to alert consumers to these type of applications and we keep with that mission because we feel consumers, especially those in shared households (Reference my recent Brady Bunch Adware Article have a fundamental right to know what is on their machine, what it does and the right to keep or remove such software as they see fit. I have often found it strange how marketing companies seem to think that most PCs are used by one person and this one person has complete control of their machine at all times. When in fact many PCs are shared by families and used by people of all age groups and skill levels.

Furthermore, as I continue my preface, for those adware supported companies curious about how we remove applications we do so by offering the user the option to remove the software or to keep it. Before removal we also try to educate consumers on how the software might have arrived on their machine before they perform any uninstall. If they do decide to remove the software we try to launch the uninstaller provided by the company if we find it truly uninstalls the application and removes it completely. In most cases the company is removing their own application the user has just made a conscious decision to do so.

Lastly, and I feel most importantly, in my conversations with corporate IT administrators, from banks to the military, which is a market we are preparing to serve through two of our new patent-pending technologies, we find the vast majority don’t want any shopping applications, games, search assistants, comparative shopping agents or any other consumer ware on their corporate networks because it becomes an issue of PRODUCTIVITY. (Shameless Plug- if you are an IT administrator or OEM interested in this new approach to managing unwanted software on your networks without scanning and removing or using any system resources contact support@xblock.com and simply ask to be put on the SRP and STP announcement list.)

For that matter it does not just extend to consumerware, adware or loyaltyware but this includes Internet Messaging applications, P2P programs and games to name a few other unwanted software programs. I might add these are areas we are moving into as well. Complex EULA issues and neat software aside, in the admin’s eyes it comes down to limited computing resources, privacy issues and what employees are doing with their time while on the job and how they are treating their corporate network. Naturally it has become more of an issue because many of these programs are running in aggregate with other competitive programs which sap valuable PC resources.

Even if a marketing software company is behaving nicely and low-impact when you factor in the several other marketing programs on a PC you begin to understand the admin’s plight and why they want their resources back under their control.

With this said let’s continue to 180solutions response.

•  

  

• Subscribe to ReveNews

  • Get ReveNews Updates in Your Reader
  • Get ReveNews Updates in Your Email

• The Latest Comments

  • SEO Text Links on Clues for Ranking with Google Caffeine
  • Matt McWilliams on The Way I See It: State of Affiliate Marketing Part 2
  • Holly Eagans on ShopAtHome Stabs Fellow Colorado Affiliates in the Back
  • Mark Welch on The Way I See It: State of Affiliate Marketing Part 2
  • Matt McWilliams on The Way I See It: State of Affiliate Marketing Part 2
  • Matt McWilliams on The Way I See It: State of Affiliate Marketing Part 2
  • Bill on The Way I See It: State of Affiliate Marketing Part 2
  • Jeannine Crooks on ShopAtHome Stabs Fellow Colorado Affiliates in the Back
  • Fred Waters on The Way I See It: State of Affiliate Marketing Part 2
  • Angel Djambazov on ShopAtHome Stabs Fellow Colorado Affiliates in the Back

• ReveNews Readers

• Archives

  Select Month February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004