May 23, 2007 by gpstevens.

As a friendly reminder to my readers and friends, please do not click on, or respond to emails from websites threatening that you need to update your account information on ANY website that needs to know your personal information and or passwords or credit card info. Thos sites are almost 100% false. Delete them! Dont even click on the link. Don’t answer any phone call that wants any personal info from you regarding any personal info about an online account that you may have created. Always keep in mind that there are people out there that have nothing better to do but steal from you and they can in fact wipe you out financially. Always be suspicious, protect yourself, and remember if it sounds to good to be true it probably is too good to be true. Consider yourself warned. If you have any questions feel free to contact me via email at gpstevens@gmail.com.

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May 3, 2007 by gpstevens.

Many times when I work on peoples’ computer I notice that alot of people have installed the yahoo toolbar. Unfortunately the Yahoo tollbar adds a whole lot more to your computer than you probably want to know. I’m not going to go into a long dissertation about it but I found an article you might find interesting, and if I were you. Uninstall the Yahoo toolbar immediately.

Send this to all of your friends.

Yahoo playing both sides!!

Mike Healan
June 2, 2004

As many of you no doubt have heard, Yahoo! recently released a new toolbar which they claim detects and removes spyware. The toolbar uses technology licensed from Pest Patrol, the vendor of a popular antispyware product.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Yahoo! has decided to set the toolbar to ignore all so-called “adware”. The toolbar forces the user specifically to set it to seek out adware.

Click for full screenshot

The reason for this decision appears to be the business relationship between Overture, which is owned entirely by Yahoo!, and the Claria corporation, which creates and distributes Gator. As it turns out, Yahoo!, through Overture, provides 31% of Claria’s entire annual revenue.

A Yahoo! spokesperson tried to deflect the issue by stating that they use Pest Patrol’s antispyware technology, which itself makes a distinction between “adware” and “spyware”. However, Pest Patrol’s software does not ignore “adware” either by default or as an option. This change was made entirely by Yahoo!

The spokesperson also tried to portray the decision as one giving choice to the user. In fact, the user has the choice already when they see the results list. The user can choose which software to remove and which to leave alone. Unless, of course, they forget to check the box for adware and then they end up with no choice at all, in the matter of adware.

Yahoo! is playing both sides of the issue, with users caught in the middle. Yahoo! could legitimize the activities of such companies as Claria, WhenU.com, Lop.com and coolwebsearch.com. These are all companies who spend significant effort trying to portray their software as “adware”. In fact, the practices of all of these companies have come into question numerous times. In Utah, for instance, Gator and WhenU.com’s advertising and installation practices are illegal.

This is an unfortunate situation. Yahoo! needs to decide whose side they are on, their users or the parasites. I would encourage all users of this toolbar to express their opinion to Yahoo!. This is a beta test after all and they are soliciting opinions from their users. I say we should take them up on that offer.

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