Spyware on speechcomputing.com?
Submitted by wayneland123 on Wed, 07/04/2007 - 20:59.
When I visited http://www.speechcomputing.com/ on 7/4/07, a PC-cillin popup said:
WARNING
Dangerous web site
You have attempted to open a dangerous Web site.
Address: http://www.qksz.net/1u-d0n
Credibility: Dangerous
Category: Spyware
Suggestion: Close your web browser window and do not reopen this web site.
The offending line in the page source seems to be:
SCRIPT type="text/javascript" LANGUAGE="javascript" src="http://www.qksz.net/1e-dl0n"
I went ahead and logged in anyway so I could post this, but it makes me nervous.
I haven't gotten a warning
I haven't gotten a warning from either SpySweeper or Spyware Doctor. What page gave the warning?
For info, go to http://www.qksz.net/, which will redirect you to http://www.cj.com/qksrv.html. It may be related to one of the sponsors on the site.
Doesn't sound dangerous to me, but it is a red flag. Maybe Skip (Admin) has something to add.
Bruce
Pc-Cillin is making a false
Pc-Cillin is making a false diagnosis of my site. The "dangerous spyware" they are touting is merely the advertising rotator software at the upper right of the page that shows sequences of ads from site sponsors.
To my knowledge, all it does is track how many people have viewed which ad and how many clicked on it. To me they are bordering on the completely paranoid calling it spyware.
I'm careful what I put on here as I don't like sites that hit you with popups, spyware and such and I really don't want to do that to others.
Here's all that's on here:
Google Analytics script: It maintains site statistics.
Google Adsense advertising scripts: It's what pays for the site to exist. Without it, there would be no site.
Google Custom Search script: I use it as it searches around 38 (?) sites that are speech or voice recognition oriented.
Statcounter Script: It's another site statistics program, it also shows the page views at the bottom of the main page. Just a backup for Google Analytics for me.
There are various site sponsor ads around that have offsite links. Roboform, Site5, Commission Junction (Newegg, Nuance), Linkshare (Sharper Image). The last two have javascripts that will tell me how many someone's saw an ad and how many someone's clicked on that ad, but nothing that's traceable to a user from my end.
I also do not sell the email addresses nor any of that.
If you need to know more, feel free to ask.
Regards,
Skip Taylor
Site Owner/Administrator
P.S. If you'd like to go to a new level of spyware and assault, try the Discovery Channel's website. It's so crowded I can't even read what I'm trying to read. So I gave up on their site completely.
I have written a short email
I have written a short email enclosing the original message here to Trend Micro, the authors of PC-Cillin asking them why they are labeling my site as "Dangerous Spyware". We'll see what they come back with.
I really don't like this site being labeled as "Dangerous" or one that spreads "Spyware".
PCMag reports that
PCMag reports that TrendMicro's suite "[r]eports many innocuous programs as suspicious" (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2031667,00.asp). That would be useful for users to know, but the software makers aren't about to tell that to their users! I think in light of Skip's reassurances, we can conclude this is another instance of a TrendMicro false positive. As I said, neither SpySweeper nor Spyware Doctor (rated #2 and #1 respectively by PCMag) have this problem.
Bruce
There was one thing that did
There was one thing that did come to light in attempting to find a good email address to send to at Trend Micro. I find it interesting that they started as a company in the United States, but are now based in Japan. I don't think it's very significant except that it makes me wonder if their R&D people are all new. It used to be that Trend Micro was an industry leader, I wonder if they just got too big?
You have to ask what irreparable harm has been done to the reputation and usership of not only this site, but to the many others using similar ad mechanisms!
Skip