The freeware SpywareTerminator program appears to be very similar to CounterSpy, without the Vista-esque redundant nag dialogs. The interface looks great and it seems stable. Will let you know how it tests on infections over the coming weeks. Hopefully it’s not a pretty face on a piece of ineffective software.

So,

Back in July of 2005 we signed a year contract with Citrix and their Gotoassist service. We used it for about 7 months until I found a program that provided the same functionality, was easier for our end users to use, and best of all, was a one-time purchase that we hosted internally.

I knew that Gotoassist would be a waste for five months, but we signed a contract, so so be it. I would pay their $325 / month fee for five more months and chalk it up to more business experience…don’t sign a contract if you can avoid it. Life lessons and all that.

The Citrix contract stipulated that you had to notify them, in writing, 30 days before date of cancellation that you wanted to cancel the contract. I sent them a letter asking them to discontinue my service after the July 2006 contract end date.

No response.

In April of 2006, my business debit card number changed, so they didn’t have my current number on file. They continued to send emailed and paper invoices, along with a notation on one of them that card had been ‘declined’. I was a little concerned, because these folks automatically debit your account, and they had not acknowledged my written request to cancel the account come July. I decided I would send them another written request, via certified mail, and after receiving confirmation of July cancellation, I would give them the new debit card number. I sent the certified mail near the end of April.

No response from Citrix.

During May, I tried to call them a couple of times, but was on interminable hold and round-robin, and after at least 20 minutes each call, I had something else I had to do…like take care of clients and try to make money.

The summer months went by and they continued to e-mail invoices, along with paper copies. By this time, I was just waiting them out. They could not automatically bill me, and sooner or later they would have to contact me.

On August 15, I got an email from James Adams stating that they were going to suspend my account. I wrote him back and told him it shouldn’t be active now, as I had submitted two written letters, one certified, cancelling my account in July. I also told him that there was an outstanding balance on what I did owe from the contract, and I asked him if he could help me facilitate proper cancellation.

No response.

By this time I was wondering if Citrix was run by Bots or Borgs or some sort of creature that could initiate communication but not respond.

On August 21, Brandi Queller from Citrix e-mailed me a PDF, showing an overdue balance for August. The subject line was “Dunning Notice”. There was no body at all, not even a signature. Hey Brandi…think a spam filter might grab that? Are you TRYING to keep your email from being noticed? I got another one just like this in September.

They then billed me for September. I sent one more letter, not certified, asking them to contact me about what their intentions were with my account, since there was no way in hell I was giving them a credit card number to pay the outstanding amount. What moron would? They were non-responsive to cancellation attempts and there was no question they would continue monthly debits of $325 ad infinitum.

The last week of September, I got a letter from the Royal Mercantile Collections Agency in Stuart, Florida. I called the lawyer/hack/cynical soul who was handling my account. I won’t name him, except to say that his real name started with B and ended with D. We’ll call him Brad.

I explained to him what was happening. I explained there was no way that I was giving them credit card info. Brad seemed to see my point and then asked me to fax him correspondence that I had given to Citrix, so he could use it in his communications with them and find out what was going on.

Brad called me about ten days later. He told me his name was Brad and he was from Royal Mercantile, representing Citrix.

He had no recollection of our previous conversation. No wonder this outfit was working for Citrix.

I reminded him, and he said he was going to look over what I had sent and call me back.

Two days later, he calls back, and I tell him again that I want written assurance from them that all invoices past July are null and void, and that my account has been cancelled. Later that day, I get a fax from Brad, along with a note from Peter at Citrix credit saying that if they collected what I owed for July, I wouldn’t owe anymore for the period through July. Brad called back to get payment, which I would not give him. I had told him that I wanted assurance that the account was cancelled, and that all invoices from July 2006 onward were null and void, and Peter had not promised that.

At that point, Brad went “Guido and Vinnie” on me and stated in a high intensity voice that “I have already already bent over backwards for you, Peter!” Well, my name isn’t Peter. Brad had gotten his names mixed up. Not only did he not know the details sufficiently, he didn’t know who he was talking to. I told him so. This seemed to get away with him a bit, and he said he would try to get that written assurance. Late that day, he did. He faxed it over. The next morning, I paid the bill.

Do NOT buy Gotoassist if you are thinking about it. Don’t deal with Citrix at all if you can help it. They never gave me any indication that my account would go to collections before they did so, and they were non-responsive to all my requests. Customer service was non-existent. I don’t mind telling you that I get satisfaction out of the fact that Brad and Royal Mercantile collections took a percentage of their money.

Got a call from a semi-irate client today.

Last week, we had cleaned her computer of spyware and put various anti-spyware and anti-virus programs on her computer. We installed Firefox, as always. Her daughter picked up her computer.

She calls today after speaking with Comcast. She did not understand “what this Foxfire is and why is it my default whatever?”

The Comcast tech said that he had never heard of it, it sounded like an infection, and we must have installed spyware on her computer.

It is now August, 2006, two years after XP SP2.

WTF is Comcast using to train their techs?

They don’t answer e-mails. Four attempts, and they are ignoring me. Have they not heard of server delivery receipts?

There is nothing lower class than a business that ignores it’s customers…particularly those they have apparently ripped off.

Well, count us as a company who just stopped recommending Alienware to their customers.

I really can’t imagine Dell letting workers actually build computers BY HAND…cuts into the margins.

There is nothing worse than a wealthy woman (who doesn’t work) who takes charge of a situation she knows nothing about.

We got in a Dell with a bad hard drive. EasyRecovery showed multiple IO errors. We call the guy yesterday and he does want a data recovery, new hard drive, and Windows reinstall.

His wife calls today. She knows nothing of what we said to him yesterday. I tell her the hard drive is bad and she interrupts me tersely with “what does that mean?” and “how exactly does that happen?” I’m sure you know the tone.

Roughly 30 minutes later she calls back and informed me that she called Dell, read the error message she got, and was told that if she reinstalled Windows she would be fine. I invited her to come over and look at the error printouts. We are in a holding pattern until she decides what to do. Unbelievable. In her mind, since it is DELL, they must know more than a small computer shop…

Oh well. I got a nice lady in Kansas instead of Gagandeep in India (the real name of the Dell tech I had to deal with last week).

Not sure what Gateway’s future is, but I hope they make it. I would pay more for a PC that offered empowered, American support staff.

and they owe us over $600 for merchandise they never shipped. Will let you know how it turns out.

Client brings in a Northgate brand laptop. I think it is one of those Shop-at-Home network or ShopNBC deals. Anyway, it feels cheap. That is about the best way I can describe it. It is heavier than it should be, the silver touchpad buttons look as if they were spray-painted with a chrome veneer stuff, and the hinges on the display squeaked.

Came in because the DVD drive was non-functional. Laser had burned out. Went to Northgate’s web site to see if the machine was under warranty…only to find they have no site any longer…so you see already where this is going.

Called the tech support number on the customer’s documentation (800-932-4957). Got a message that the number had changed to 800-424-4400. So, we called it.

It’s a sex chat line.

My experiment with Vonage began last summer, when I decided to give them a shot for my business service.

Long story short…since I had three phones, they sent three routers (!?!) to put on our network. Big red flag.

I was eventually assured that it WOULD work…I would just not have working Internet, but the phones would work! Oh, joy!

So I went through a telephone circus with various Indians getting my account cancelled. Finally, we agreed that I would purchase the 3 routers at a discount and I was told I could just sell them. They were all new in the box, never used.

I put one on Ebay recently. It sold.

The guy who bought it emails and says that it is still attached to my account and I need to call Vonage to have it released. I do so.

The girl tells me that she can’t release it. She tells me I have to get the buyer on a conference call, with him, myself, and a Vonage rep on the line to do the transfer. She can’t just release the router?

Vonage, we will be passing along my experience to our now more than 2400 clients. I am also switching at home.

Dell sent a client 2 incorrect power supplies for his 4600c…then a third (refurb) that was bad, then the fourth worked. Dell told him to keep the bad ones (too much actual work to check them back in). He gave them to us.

Ebay, here we come…

Was at a client’s home yesterday extolling the virtues of Belkin’s Parental Control option in their routers. The client is thinking of going Mac and I explained that all computers, no matter what platform, would be covered.

First off, if you log into the router and try to click the Belkin Parental Control thingy when the modem is in PPPOE mode and dynamically giving an address to the router, it doesn’t work. Change the modem to bridged mode and then set up the router for PPPOE, and all will be fine. This little hindrance is NOT the complaint.

I open up the Parental Control Subscribe tab (which also doesn’t work unless you disable all popup blocking in the browser) and I am presented with something new…a 3 month trial to Belkin’s “comprehensive antispyware and parental control utility”, OR, if I want to just use the old-style parental controls ONLY with a 6 month trial…click here.

Folks, the 3 month deal is a Zonealarm trial…promoted by Belkin.

Er, Belkin,

1. Zonealarm has become increasingly unstable since version 5.5. We uninstall it regularly for clients who are having connectivity issues and replace it with Sunbelt Kerio or a pre-Symantec version of Sygate.

2. Zonealarm runs only on PCs.

3. Zonealarm is very hackable and uninstallable. A proficient 13 year old can do it with no trouble.

4. A localized-to-the-machine software program? Why even have router based parental controls at all? Oh, I forgot. The Benjamins.

So, I clicked on the 6 month trial of your good, router based, parental control setup. Entered name and email addy. Clicked Submit.

Got an ASP error saying Sendmail was down.

Belkin, we have promoted your products to at least 100 clients, half of them based on router-centric parental controls. Get your stuff together. This sucks. You know better.

That’s right kids…

Last week, 2 (count em, 2!) clients had external hard drives fail on them. Can you guess what was inside the easily disassembled plastic caddies of both?

That’s right…….

Kids, can you say ‘class action?’

Formatted and restored a teenager’s 6 month old Sony laptop which had become infested with copious amounts of spyware gathered from a quite impressive porn surfing habit. Of course, the user had lost his recovery software.

So…knowing that Sony’s web support for their computers is about as easy to navigate as the Great Barrier Reef, I steeled myself for the inevitable hour downloading drivers that may or may not work.

When what to my wondering eyes should appear…a page asking only for the Model number. I punched it in.

What I saw next was stunning…a page that asked me if I was looking for original drivers, driver updates, or everything. I clicked Everything.

I was then transported to a page that should be mandatory with every PC maker. There was a simple list of all the drivers ALONG WITH SOFTWARE (SonicStage) that shipped with this PC. Not all the gunky software and trial programs, but the things like the touchpad configuration utility that you can actually use. Not only that, there was a javascript “Select All” checkbox which I immediately hit, and then proceeded on. At that point I was asked if I had the Sony Download Taxi.

Corny name. But is this really what I think it is?

It is.

A small program that allows all drivers to be downloaded at once. In my case, 194mb worth. And after downloading…allows selective installations.

Sony, I may never buy one of your CDs, but I will certainly buy and recommend your PCs (just don’t fuck up again by allowing European hackers to dictate how you deal with customers.)

Hello…HP….Dell….E-Gateway….EMULATE SONY AND DO THIS NOW!

If Driverguide.com can come up with their clunky toolkit, and Sony does something this fabulous with the Download Taxi, please make life easier on all of us and emulate them.

Three in the last week that have motherboard or other various weird problems…is there a dated chip in there? Peter Graves would love this.

Try finding the trial of Spysweeper now. It’s not there. Only the scan-only version.

Way to go, Webroot. We used to push you to our clients because you killed more than anyone else on the market. Now what do we tell them?

‘Er, you should buy this because it has the potential to get rid of these items….”

I know some might think this is becoming a Sunbelt fan site, but Counterspy (1) makes a polluted machine cleaner in a trial period (2) is cheaper.

Sweeper

Originally uploaded by titans13.

Clarification of the Webroot story…the full trial is still there, it is just more difficult to find. One would think that clicking on a “Downloads” link would lead one to a trial version, eh?

On their home page, if one clicks on the “Downloads” link in the green “Home” section, there is no link to the fully functional trial program. If one clicks “Learn More”, you are taken to a page that includes a link to the trial.

If you download the “Scan Version”, you will be prompted to purchase the product before being able to remove anything (see screenshot).

I have to wonder if Joey (who so kindly told us to learn how to navigate the web in his previous post’s comment) would like to enlighten us on why the Scan Version even exists if the full trial is so “easily accessible”. I would imagine that Joey is a Webroot employee…the spiteful attitude he has in his comment seems a bit much for someone without a vested interest.

This is not a slam on Webroot. We begrudge nobody a profit. Webroot makes a great product in SpySweeper and is certainly a good guy in the ongoing spyware war. It is just apparent that the web site was engineered to steer people into downloading the “Scan Version”, meaning they want more people to pay for Spy Sweeper in order to remove their infection. Hey…that is their right….but…

I personally don’t like the tactic of allowing a scan and then not letting the user quarantine the items after taking the time to run the scan without buying the product. With Webroot’s former “Spy Audit”, you knew what you were getting…an audit that told you if you needed a cleanup. With this Sweeper scan edition, Webroot is targeting noobs that don’t know any other way…they may feel trapped into buying the product. In a way, that is what this essentially is, although much less slimy. That leans toward bait and switch, and I just think that it is social engineering in bad form. That is why we never pushed Spyware Doctor as a good item to our clients…they make another great product but distribute it in limited form. SD, on the other hand, 2 years ago claimed that if you bought the program, you could remove Abetterinternet (the early versions were super-nasty) and it didn’t work. I guess that is why we are so leery of that practice.

It would appear that as of yesterday, Webroot’s demo version of Spy Sweeper requires that you purchase it before it removes anything. This is bad news, and makes the product harder to sell to our clients. Sweeper is great and kills lots of stuff…also has the ability to scan for rootkits and has a pseudo-firewall. BUT…on our scan sheets, we always demonstrated the traces that Counterspy and SpySweeper killed and the customer was impressed…mostly by the fact that they killed more than anything else.

We have yet to see if the previous trial of Sweeper will update itself and kill anything.

Webroot, I think you made a mistake. The majority of the population is not geeky. People are not going to buy something before it has proven itself. Well…maybe they will…Spy Axe and Spyware Stormer come to mind…

Sometimes dark things happen in our universe that we cannot begin to understand.

The recent purchase of Sygate by Symantec, and the discontinuation of Sygate’s free firewall, reminded us of the AOL/Netscape deal of 1998. Back then, those of us who were savvy were dismayed to see Netscape dying on the vine due to:

1. MS’s aggressive pushing of Internet Explorer on OEMs…and threatening those who included Netscape on their machines

2. Windows 98 really brought the Internet mainstream, as 95 was just not designed for net use…and those first-time computer buyers had that big ole IE icon right there. Who knew how to download or use Netscape? Why should they?

So…when AOL bought Netscape, many of us rejoiced and thought that AOL would use it’s resources to revitalize Netscape. Immediately, AOL signed a contract with MS to bundle IE with all AOL installs and Netscape languished.

So, how phenomenal was it to hear yesterday that Sunbelt, a perennial white hat in the spyware war, is going to save arguably the best freeware utililty out there and keep a version of it free…the fantastic Kerio Personal Firewall! Not only that, they plan on lowering the price for the rebranded pro version. Compare that to Symantec buying Sygate solely to extinguish Sygate’s free firewall…which blew the Norton firewall away.

Sunbelt, it is actions like these that restore one’s faith in business practices that result in both profit AND benefit the common good. Way to go. We will promote you as much as we possibly can.

Norton

Originally uploaded by titans13.

Take a look at this pic. It is a screen capture of a client’s computer immediately after running a CounterSpy scan.

Notice the first listed item that CounterSpy finds…traces of one of the Sober worm variants. Now…look in the system tray. What do you see running?

That’s right…Norton Antivirus 2005! We ran an entire deep file scan of this PC, including .zip files…meaning every single file on this PC was active at some point during the scan. Virus files were addressed by Counterspy…there is no denying it! So what does Norton do?

Nada. Just sat there. No alerts. No nothing. Norton was fully updated and all active protections were running during this scan.

We are starting to wonder if this is deliberate engineering on Norton’s part. Maybe they don’t have the resources to deal with what would happen phone-support-wise if their product picked up everything that say, Avast does.