OA phoning home with invasive quips

I have set OA paid not to update automatically and i have the "send anonymous info" unchecked. Tonight i noticed a message on the taskbar stating:

"OA has just realized one of the OA teamers has his HAPPY BIRTHDAY. Glory, glory to the heroes of the invisible battle!!"

I don't mind birthdays but i don't want small quips and ads in software that i have paid for. I have not noticed the phrase before so how was it put on my computer since all my settings do not allow OA to phone home naturally? Must i go and block oaui.exe from making any contact to it's company? Will OA function properly with oaui.exe blocked within program access?

How can i be sure the next time a quip is put on my computer that it will be safe? What if next time my children hovers over the shield and it says:

"OA teamers like sex all the time!!"

http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/6006/18696836nq4.png

 

My experience of some six months as a beta tester with OA is that your fears are very unlikely to occur; OA is PG-rated all the way!!!

As for the quippishness, ... well, they've had a long year in the salt mine. I'd cut them a little slack.

SamSpade

 

Hi,

http://support.tallemu.com/vbforum/showpost.php?p=40128&postcount=9

A easter egg, no phoning home, no invasion of privacy.
Happy birthday to whomsoever.

Cheers

 

I would question the point of such coding into a security application. Get rid of the bugs instead of adding such ridiculous, inappropriate actions from a security application.

My own personal view, like it or not.


- Stem

 

Sorry Mike to had sounded as if i was truly disturbed. I love your product and would never abandon it for a silly birthday greeting. I was just concerned how it was put there, the fact of a hard-code never crossed my mind. Sorry for the stir but it had to be done for clarification purposes. Please do not reprimand the employee.

I am satisfied with the answer that was given to me by Mike. "Hard-Coded, not phoned in."

OA FTW

 

Mike has also posted on the thread:-

 

Kill yourself off , maybe easier to do it better?

Maybe such incorporation was mentioned somewhere? I do believe it would of been shot down.

 

I can see the humor intended...

I can also understand why more than just the thread-starter was angered by such an event, as it is almost "graffiti" in that someone else's (Mike's) property was de-faced...

I would say most people would be indifferent to this event, and hopefully it blows over. I don't use OA (but have in the past) but occasionally re-install just to see if will work on my system yet. I would hate to see any damage done to TallEmu's rep over this, and hope development keeps it's rigorous pace. With limited freewares in the security field, (AS, AV, FW, etc) OnlineArmor has produced a healthy (Comodo) competition to provide the best product for it's consumers. Just my 2c...

 

I think the team has so many time left to code some (unfunny) easter eggs, while the program still stuffed with bugs.

 

You need to look up the definition of "Easter egg"

I would then put forward, as these popups are hard_coded with no need for interaction for the popups, that OA must be a joke?

 

I can understand the funny side of the prank. now that said and clear.....i my self would not wont or like a very important piece of security software hard coded or not!! telling me it's some body's B-Day. it's not a small matter.. if the hard code was not seen before it was released is there any other Easter Eggs or bad codding?? there is no reason for that to take place Evan the MS flight simulator had to be looked for!! it just didn't pop up and say want to play a game. simply there is no excuse for the actions of the programmers at OA. 2

 

It,s a childish idea, doesn,t attract me at all.

 

OKKERS Rule!

 

Yes I saw something similar in Amd Cpu looked like a little devil or so.

 

In any case pictures etched in processor chips or on the circuit board is a fare cry from sloppy coding!! and there is no room for that kind of playing around on one of the most important pieces of security software that most if not all rely on every day to protect them from this kind of stuff and it makes OA look like they are just joking about security.

 

It's just a little hardcoded popup, not the end of the world.

 

Hi,

OA did not inform you of such a joke beforehand, eh?
Then made some explanations afterwards, that is all ?
What will happen, if next surprise(s) surface(s) ? another explanation ?

IMO. OA should come clean to tell us all the untold story, eh ?

Where are the rules of ethics ? Firewall/antivirus is a serious matter, such an invisible foreign object is not easily tolerated at all, again, IMO, you may not buy my points..

BTW, aside from this , OA is an excellent app.

 

Definitely inappropriate. I'd bet it was done by a programmer who thought it would be a fun lark, without permission of his boss. Aussie humor go figure

OA is a fine security app and should not be judged too harshly for this imo.

 

do i think this was a conspiracy: NO nothing to gain from that.
was it stupid: YES
was the programmer tired: could not have been he/she had the energy to add that little reminder.

if this was done on any other security app it would almost be considered rogue. how can OA say they have QA to there users when they installed a FW that also doubled as a Birth Record archive
no matter how a person looks at the prank it's not what a security app should be doing!! the code is dirty OA/staff willing walked there self to the chopping block.

 

Wow, I just stumbled across this thread and saw the picture of what popped up......are you guys kidding? You're upset over a small text message about a birthday? Nobody (well, nobody except some here) is going to go off the handle because some stupid little text message popped up about somebody's birthday. You all are smart enough to know that what you fear can happen because of hardcoding can indeed happen, but you should also be smart enough to know that it was a dumb joke by a bored programmer and there is absolutely no reason to start bashing the company over it.

Get a grip, please. I swear guys, you chastise posters for spreading FUD, yet a lot of it comes right from here. If nobody likes that opinion then they know how to ignore/ban me, whatever. But damn, it's turning into a "epeen" contest lately with all this "FUD" accusation finger pointing, outright insults because some THINK they know better than others, and "my setup is better/more secure than yours" bullcrap.

I'm not talking to all of you, but a few of you need to seriously grow up and , as is sometimes demanded by others here, shut up if you don't have anything to say that's relevant or furthers a discussion in a positive manner. You do realize you can argue points without going the "my crap don't stink" way, right?

 

Wow, this is the biggest thing since it was discovered that ZA-FW would call home against the user's wishes!!! Oops....this didn't call home, it was hard-coded. Okay, this is the biggest thing since CHKDSK errors in KAV!!! Oops...this didn't cause errors or damage. How about this? It's been a slow couple of weeks and there's not much else to bash....er....talk about!!! Seriously though, I'm sure "Mike" has been busy checking under the hood for any more surprises, so let's give him a chance to sort this out before we call for a public lynching.
So "Mike", any chance it was your b'day and the office wanted to surprise you

 

I agree completely with you, lol, jeez.

 

I think all that fuss is about product/code is not checked before publishing, so that so called "easter egg" could be anything...