Spyware Warrior

TeMerc · Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 11:19 pm Post subject:

Check out the screenshots:

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suzi · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 5:51 pm Post subject:

Thanks for posting this. Great screenshots, too.
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Recon Man · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 5:44 am Post subject:

Hello Suzi and TeMerc Very Happy

,

Indeed, SiteAdviser does seem to be a quantum leap in internet security and a sign of great things to come with regards to preventing users from hurting themselves by accessing dubious sites. A most exciting and promising innovation to say the least. I look forward to its release in the future.

In the meantime, however, it is a matter of carrying the right amount of security hardware/software onboard and avoiding going to those shady websites so prevalent on the internet these days.

Best Regards,

Recon Man Wink

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mikey · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 6:13 am Post subject:

I'm about as skeptical as anyone when it comes to sites that collect user profiles as this one does. (They claim to aggregate & discard.) However, I find this outfit and concept very intriguing. The data transfered is NOT personally identifiable as demo'ed here with the capture of a normal transfer made with every request to any site visited(noted no GUIDs or identifying cookies);

TeMerc · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 7:28 am Post subject:

No, this is certainly not a cure all by any stretch, but I think in a general sense, users wil be immediatly re-directed when they see the red flag. And while it will take a rather long time to get a really useful amount of sites covered, they are just beginning.

Yes, there is bound to be some abuse but for this type of app, or for any app for that matter there is potential for that. The proof of the pudding will see how they deal with the abuse to fix it.

There is good commentary going on over at this DSLR thread. The guy from SiteAdvisor even dropped in as did Ben.
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jlowell · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 7:49 am Post subject:

All of these new approaches interesting, I still think that our Repentance Forum represents the best defense against malware. To see the turnaround in a person like fcukdat is truly spellbinding Very Happy

:

http://www.spywarewarrior.com/viewtopic.php?t=16370

Just joshin.

jlowell

mikey · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 8:07 am Post subject:

I would also note that their server/s have been very slow to respond this morning. This makes using this tool incompatible with fast surfing. For this to work, their responses must be fast. Users wont tolerate slow resposes in their browsers that are caused by a browser add on tool timing out.
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W2K/2K3/XP/2K8/Vista/W7/RHE/DEBIAN/SUSE

Spyware/Adware is NOT freeware, it costs all of us dearly.

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Nick · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 8:58 am Post subject:

This could be good, but as mikey already said, regular folks aren't going to use it and be inconvenienced. If that one screenshot above is what a page looks like, then that's too much information for most people to deal with. Maybe it is a composite picture.

Also, what are these people getting for doing this. Who's paying for all of the bandwidth the bots are using? Do these bots follow a robots.txt? If they do then what if the bad people just block it with it? If it ignores the robots.txt, then isn't that a no no. What happens if the bots are blocked by htacess? Does the site automatically get a red flag? How much bandwidth does the bot use when looking around the site? If it uses alot and visits frequently, then webmasters are likely to block it.
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Oldfrog · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 9:14 am Post subject:

Excellent points, Nick. This site, for example, does some very aggressive robot control as do most of the ones that I am familiar with on the backside.

mikey · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 10:07 am Post subject:

Yes Nick, very good points.

chris_dixon · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 12:54 pm Post subject: Some responses to issues raised

Hi everyone

This is Chris Dixon from SiteAdvisor.

I thought I'd take a moment to answer some of the issues raised here.

1. Our hosting facility actually appeared to get DOS'd this morning, severly limiting upstream traffic. They seem to have tracked down the source of the attack and stopped it. In the near future, we will have a full back up web cluster set up at another data center in case this happens again. We are really sorry about this inconvenience.

Our systems right now (while they aren't getting DOS'd!) should be able to handle a very large number of simultanoues users. We actually wrote our own data serving system that prepackages the analyzed data and serves it directly from a memory resident database. Of course we are in early Beta so problems could very well arise. If you experience any performance problems, please feel free to submit feedback directly to us via http://www.siteadvisor.com/feedback.html and we'll try our best to diagnose the issue (we have been personally responding to almost all feedback so far and have already started working on a number of issues people have raised).

2. As to the issue of people potentially using the user feedback mechanism to corrupt the site ratings, we are thinking hard about introducing a full blown "reputation system" for users in the near future, similar to how it is done on sites like eBay. In the short term, we are very likely going to start a "moderator program" where interested users who sign up will have more impact on the site ratings and get greater access to the detailed data. We will also be releasing an API so users can use the data in their own (non-commercial) applications.

Thanks for all your comments and please keep them coming!

-Chris
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mikey · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 3:37 pm Post subject:

Hey Chris, very nice to see ya. I've been in contact with one of your mates...Paul. Seems like a nice sort. I'll quote myself here from my email to him; "I appreciate folks(devs) taking the time to solve user probs and address concerns. It speaks volumns about their character."

Well, it seems you are suffering some growing pains. Many of us in this pri/sec community have had the uncomfortable experience of dealing with severe DDoS attacks. Let's hope your experience is a mild one.

Anyway, again I thank you for taking the time to address our concerns. I would also say that I look fwd to continued exchanging of ideas and concerns. As well, I look fwd to hearing back from Paul(edited). Thx much.

Mike

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EDIT: BTW While I have your attention; Do you think it could be a good idea to add an on/off toggle(bypass) to the context menu? I was thinking it might be of some use to some users especially when they are first trying out the concept.
Ref; {089FD14D-132B-48FC-8861-0048AE113215} ()
BHO name:
CLSID name:
Path: D:\Program Files\SiteAdvisor\
Long name: saIE.dll__BHODemonDisabled
_________________
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W2K/2K3/XP/2K8/Vista/W7/RHE/DEBIAN/SUSE

Spyware/Adware is NOT freeware, it costs all of us dearly.

Mikey's Stuff

Fiddler and friends...essential web diagnostic, forensic, & development tools.
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