180Solutions Wins Dance Contest!!!

I recently posted some info pertaining to questions posed by one of the more outspoken critics of 180Solutions, Wayne Porter.

Well, from Suzi's Spyware Warrior Blog comes word that 180Solutions replied to Waynes questions. I would have used the term 'answered', but in all intents and purposes, all 180 did do, was infact 'dance' around the questions. Hence my title for this peice.

I won't go into any great detail into the questions and answers, but suffice it to say, pretty much every answer was proven to be nearly a complete lie, and at the very least a stretch of thier(180Solutions) imaginations. If they did half of what they claimed, they should still be drawn and quartered for all the greif they have caused users in removing their crapware installs.

I will give them this, in all the HJT logs I have done, I have rarely had any major trouble having users remove what was drive-by-downloaded onto their systems. But now I see mention that they have developed an 'easier uninstall process'. <?>

I can only hope its nothing along the lines of what New.Net did with thier long list of 'options' to uninstall their stuff here. Before they got this page up, their app used to uninstall simply via Add\Remove and very rarely give users any problems. Since then, many of the users have to go thru and double check as things seem to be left behind.

While thier alleged purpose for joining COAST was to 'join and contribute to setting standards around downloadable applications and online advertising' its quite apparant they failed in that effort, as did the entire COAST organisation. Almost everyone assosciated with COAST has some 'residue' on them, in one form or another. And its not likely one trip to the dry cleaners is going to get it off.

About the only smart ones, beleive it or not was Lavasoft. They saw fit a long time ago to leave COAST. Somehow, someone there saw the writing on the wall. My guess is it was not the same person who dealt with the WhenU dabacle.

All in all the replies to Waynes questions make for some amazing reading. And entertaining if your a person who is fairly well versed in the security sector of the Internet.

Of course, it would also make good reading for someone who is looking for a good lesson in 'skirting' the issues too.

Suzi's Blog Entries & Comments

Wayne Porter's 'Answers' From 180Solutions