Author: Ed Bott

Tech journalist. Author of 25+ books. ZDNET Contributing Editor since 2006. Contact info: https://edbott.com/contact-me/

Whatever happened to SpyNet?

I wrote this back in February, shortly after the first beta of Microsoft AntiSpyware was released:

There’s always going to be suspicion when a single company is making go/no-go decisions on whether a program should be considered a threat or benign. That’s why I like the community-based approach introduced by GIANT AntiSpyware (the original developer of the antispyware product that Microsoft purchased). Microsoft has committed to keeping the SpyNet community as a key part of the final release.

I would like to see as much transparency as possible from all security vendors, especially when you’re talking about products that are legal but unethical. The products in this category aren’t viruses, pushed into the world by anonymous vandals. These are typically commercial products, released by identified companies. The bar to removal should be high (although the user should be able to make the level of protection more stringent). One thing I like about Microsoft AntiSpyware is that it is first and foremost a preventive measure. It alerts you when a program is trying to sneak an auto-starting module into the Registry or change your home page, and it gives you the power to stop damage before it can occur. The real problem with spyware comes when it sneaks onto a computer. Anything that Microsoft can do to prevent Windows from being misused in this fashion is a Good Thing.

Whatever happened to the SpyNet community? And can you call something a “community” when people don’t have a way to communicate with other members of the community?

Hey, Scoble, maybe you should start bringing in some guest interviewers for your Channel 9 interviews? I’d love to ask some questions of the AntiSpyware team with your cameras rolling. Don’t you think customers would enjoy that?

Dell shuts down Customer Service boards

On the home page of the Dell Community Forum:

Dell_listening

Ah, but inside:

The Customer Service boards on the Dell Community Forum will be retiring at 3:30pm this Friday, July 8th. … Customer Service FAQs will still be available to help answer your questions. If you need further assistance, you may contact our customer service team via Chat for any non-technical issue you may have.

Dell continues its race to the bottom with the new management strategy: If your customers continue to ask annoying questions, stop listening.

(See previous posts here, here, and here. Link via Christopher Carfi)

Dear Microsoft: Why should we trust you to detect spyware?

Yesterday, in an update to my post about the ongoing Microsoft/Claria rumors, I wrote:

The real story is that Microsoft has decided that high-profile adware makers who achieve a minimum threshold of disclosure (including Claria and WhenU) will be able to get an “Ignore” rating.

Microsoft earned a tremendous amount of goodwill earlier this year when it released a beta version of Windows AntiSpyware. That goodwill is vanishing at an alarming rate thanks to the rumors that Microsoft plans to buy Claria, a company that made its fortune as a leading distributor of spyware and adware. To compound the problem, Microsoft apparently relaxed its standards for certain high-profile adware companies, Claria included, earlier this year. This post details how much damage Microsoft is doing to itself and offers two admittedly controversial recommendations for how they can recover.

Continue reading “Dear Microsoft: Why should we trust you to detect spyware?” →

Fox News says: Be afraid. Oh, and carry a towel.

News Hounds (motto: We watch FOX so you don’t have to) reports on the latest Fox News fear-mongering:

Juval Aviv, counter terrorism expert, claims in an article for FoxNews.com,that Americans can expect a terrorist attack as soon as tommorrow or ninety days at the latest. Aviv is full of survival advice and tips on where and how terrorists will attack us. However nothing he writes is backed up with any verifiable fact or sources.

[…]

Aviv tells readers to always carry a bottle of water and towel on mass transit so you can wet the towel and cover your face when the explosions occur. He later wrote that there will be several explosions and seven or eight cities will be hit at once.

Sound familiar? I thought so too. Apparently, someone in the Fox newsroom is channeling the late Douglas Adams:

A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have… any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

— The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

According to the BBC, May 25 has been designated as Towel Day, in honor of Adams.

Or maybe C is for Clueless

Dwight Silverman talks to a Dell flack about the many reports of miserable customer service in online forums and on blogs:

I spoke with Jennifer J. Davis, a spokesperson in Dell’s consumer products group, who said that Dell does indeed monitor online blogs and discussion forums. She would not say how many people are engaged in doing so.

However, it’s a policy of look, don’t touch — those monitoring do not respond publicly, nor do they try to make contact pro-actively.

“The best process for getting issues addressed is to contact us directly,” she said.

Clueless. Tell that to the people who have contacted Dell via its own forums and have been ignored or blown off. I know, because I’m one. Tell that to the people who continue to get misinformation from phone reps despite dozens of reports of a problem with power supplies in the Dimension 4600 series. I know, because I’m one.

“With our direct model, we feel like we already have a good, two-way communications channel with our customers,” Davis said.

You’re wrong. But you won’t realize it until you begin to engage in a conversation with your customers.

Thanks for getting this on the record, Dwight.

Boing Boing gets a big shovel, spreads BS

Follow the bouncing distortion:

It starts on CNET, with a story that quotes anonymous “sources” saying Microsoft is “in discussions to buy controversial adware maker Claria.” (The New York Times runs a similar story later the same day, with a few more details, including a quote from its unnamed source saying, “Those in favor of the deal … believe Microsoft could help clean up the adware field,” but that the talks are falling apart.)

Then the story goes to Slashdot, where the reference to “sources” is dropped.

A week later, another Slashdot story begins “A week after word leaked out that Microsoft was negotiating an acquisition deal with Claria…” Leaked out? All of a sudden the anonymous sources are confirmed?

Boing Boing, consistently rated in the Top 10 among sites in Technorati, picks up the ball and spikes it in the end zone in the Ultimate Fantasy Bowl:

MSFT acquires spyware firm, changes antispyware app to ignore its products
Microsoft recently acquired a spyware company called Claria (known for its spyware product, Gator). They have since updated Windows’ antispyware app so that it advises users to ignore Gator spyware.

So the rumor became a confirmed story and now it’s a done deal. Not to mention that the change in the status of Claria’s products happened as much as four months ago. Back in the reality-based community, the whole story’s still just a rumor based on a pair of stories from unnamed sources, but science fiction writer Cory Doctorow, who authored the Boing Boing piece, apparently has a news feed from a parallel universe.

And to compound the error, Prof. Brad DeLong picks it up and calls Microsoft a “company behaving very badly,” because if you read it on the Internets, it must be true.

As the good Professor might say, “Why oh why can’t we have a better blogger corps?”

Update, 7/9: Boing Boing has printed a “correction” that strikes out the words recently acquired and replaces them with is rumored to be acquiring. The headline now reads MSFT acquiring spyware firm. That’s wrong. The CNET and NY Times stories say that Microsoft is “in talks” to acquire Claria and that the deal is far from a sure thing.

Even worse, Boing Boing has left the original story up, uncorrected. See the original here, and the changed version here. If I use a search engine, I have a 50-50 chance of getting the original, bollixed-up version. Sloppy, sloppy.

And the sentence that follows the “corrected” one now makes no sense at all: Boing Boing says “[Microsoft has] since updated Windows’ antispyware app so that it advises users to ignore Gator spyware.” Since when? The implication is that this was a quid pro quo, but the change in detection status for Claria’s applications was made earlier this year (as Donna Buenaventura reported), and it affected other adware companies as well. The New York Times story says the talks between Claria and Microsoft started a few weeks ago. If there’s a quid pro quo, the timeline doesn’t support it.

The real story is that Microsoft has decided that high-profile adware makers who achieve a minimum threshold of disclosure (including Claria and WhenU) will be able to get an “Ignore” rating. Reasonable people can argue that that’s a bad decision, but the Boing Boing story doesn’t do that. It tries to create a story of corruption where none exists.

Update 7/10: The uncorrected Boing Boing story is still there. Meanwhile, if you want to know more about Microsoft’s decision to change the classification of Claria’s adware, see my follow-up: Dear Microsoft: Why should we trust you to detect spyware?

Update 7/12 6:00 a.m.: As of this morning, the original, uncorrected post appears to have been deleted from Boing Boing’s servers. The “corrected” version is still online and still wrong.

Update 7/12, 6:00 p.m. PDT: No deal. Boing Boing still says “MSFT acquiring spyware firm…”

Update 11/13/2006: The original story has never been corrected.

Our miserable media

I was up early yesterday morning, early enough to catch the half-hour live broadcast of the BBC News that airs on my local PBS channel every morning. After it ended, I switched over to CNN and watched it until I couldn’t stand the babbling anymore. Which wasn’t very long. It turns out I wasn’t the only one who noticed a difference. This analysis by critic David Zurawik appeared in this morning’s Baltimore Sun:

While the American news channels and commercial networks that aired in Britain yesterday were filled with images of carnage and talk of confusion in the wake of bombings in London, the government-supported BBC, the most-watched news outlet in the United Kingdom in times of crisis, offered viewers an oasis of relative calm. Interviews with correspondents and government officials interspersed with videotaped images of emergency workers restoring order provided a sense of stability even as the death toll climbed.

Zurawik provided examples of CNN’s hysteria and fear-mongering and contrasted them with the calm, stoic, fact-based approach of the BBC.

The marked contrast in coverage offers clues to differences in national history and character. It also stems from a philosophy at the BBC that is decidedly at odds with that of the ratings-driven networks and all-news cable channels of the U.S.

“The tonality, rhythm and psychology of BBC coverage of the bombings – very low-key, very measured, with no calls for revenge or emotional response – is not an accident,” said Greg Nielsen, director of the BBC World Archive at Concordia University in Montreal.

“It goes back to the days of the Second World War when the BBC World Radio reports were such a key source of information for the Allied forces and the world. There’s a certain attitude and quite different history from commercial broadcasters both in America and Britain that results in higher standards – a keen sense of duty in time of crisis.”

What does that mean for Americans?

Michael Brody, a Washington psychiatrist, said he applauded the BBC coverage yesterday.

“I’ve been monitoring CNN and the BBC all day, and there’s no doubt about it,” said Brody, who heads the Television & Media Committee of the American Academy of Childhood and Adolescent Psychiatry.

“American TV – particularly the all-news cable guys – is constantly hyping things up with talk of the potential for further attacks, while the BBC was trying to calm things down and reassure viewers that things were under control. As a psychiatrist, I have no doubt about the harmful effects of the former vs. the helpful effects of what I saw happening on the BBC.”

Please note that the BBC passed along all the facts. I didn’t feel that they were holding back anything or that CNN was engaging in more aggressive or knowledgeable reporting. The professionals at the BBC were just using fewer inflammatory adjectives and adverbs, and they weren’t indulging in random speculation.

And don’t get me started on Fox News, where anchor Brit Hume said his “first thought” after hearing about the attacks was that it would be an excellent time to put a few more dollars in the stock market:

I mean, my first thought when I heard — just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, “Hmmm, time to buy.”

That’s on the heels of the disgusting remarks by anchor John Gibson (just hours before the bombings) who says he wished the Olympic committee had awarded the 2012 Olympics to France:

It would have been a three-week period where we wouldn’t have had to worry about terrorism.

First, the French think they are so good at dealing with the Arab world that they would have gone out and paid every terrorist off. And things would have been calm.

Or another way to look at it is the French are already up to their eyeballs in terrorists. The French hide them in miserable slums, out of sight of the rich people in Paris.

So it would have been a treat, actually, to watch the French dealing with the problem of their own homegrown Islamist terrorists living in France already.

It would have been a delight to have Parisians worried about security instead of New Yorkers. It would have been exquisite to watch.

Does Gibson get a free pass because he said that before the attacks? Nope. After the bombings, he wrote:

This is why I thought the Brits should let the French have the Olympics (search) — let somebody else be worried about guys with backpack bombs for a while.

In a sane world, both those guys would be working for the minimum wage instead of being paid huge salaries to whip their audiences into a jingoistic frenzy.

We really deserve a better media in this country.

(Thanks to Approximately Perfect for the Baltimore Sun link, and Scoble for the pointer to Loic’s post.)

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