Slander and Majorgeeks recommended software

Kostan · May 28, 2006

Hello,

I wonder what has happened to Majorgeeks and permitted
(slanderers) software to appear among all the other good recommended S/W.

I am talking ofcourse about Startup-Mechanic 2.7 and the way it treats
ZoneAlarm, Adobe Reader and SuperAntispyware.
It not only finds these as harmful and recommends disabling them but for
SuperAntiSpyware goes even further it says that it heard that SAS Developers "borrowed"
an old spybot database and finally asks "not to support these guys!" (Unbelievable, if this is not slander I don't know what it is!!!)

I am a PC newbie and I trust MajorGeeks with my PC plus I have recommended
their site to lots of my friends so, I would like to see how the Site Owners
respond.

If it was up to me I would first pull down the "slanderers Software" if
you can call it S/W and second publish an apology to the owners of the
affected software, especially SAS.

I honestly believe these are the most appropriate actions they must take and
that this was a slip up and it will not happen again, after all
Majorgeeks is the Internet's Top site for recommending software.

Thank you

1.There is no phone number or e-mail address anywhere on
startupmechanic.com,I wonder why?
2.The software is dated 2004, so why does it appear as new May 27,2006 ?

DavidGP · May 28, 2006

I have sent a note to the owners of MGs and no doubt they will respond to your question soon.

Dont know wether I would go as far to say slander, as the software is old and most likely similar to some newer security software will suffer from false positives ( not welcome and wanted but does happen to the best of software at times, Symantec, Microsoft etc have all flagged some good legit software as potential problems in the past ), now if this Startup Mechanic application is not regularily updating its definition database file then it will need assessing as to wether is still should be included in the software we list for download, so to that end cheers for bringing it to the attention of the site.

Major Attitude · May 28, 2006

Not sure where youare, but in the US, it is memorial day weekend so i am away. Ill re-check the program when I get home. It was updated because we were behind a version, being listed on the front page is not a guarantee it was just released, though that is normally the case. Last night I strted checking every file on the site and updated things we missed. I will try and look again tonight.

P.S I do, though take offence tothe "what happened to MajorGeeks" comment. Everyone gets infected, so naturally were bound to miss one here and there, we rely on people to let us know as well as our own tests, its just a shame that some people would turn on us over one mistake in 3 years rather then drop me an email or simply ask without insulting. In this case I dont use Symantec (nor do we recommend their bloated products), Adobe or even know what SuperAntiSpyware even is, so that could probably be one issue.

SUPERAntiSpy · May 28, 2006

Hello all - Nick Skrepetos from SUPERAntiSpyware.com here. I don't believe the person who posted this meant any harm or ill-will towards MG - he is a concerned user of SUPERAntiSpyware - I know this because we were also contacted about this issue. I believe this is a simple case of a "False Positive" with other product.

As you indicated you did not know what SUPERAntiSpyware was I thought I would provide some background information as I know people are very nervous (rightfully so) of "new" anti-spyware programs.

SUPERAntiSypware has been around for about 2 years as part of SUPERAdBlocker ( http://www.superadblocker.com ). We have received many 5-star reviews from SnapFiles.com, CNET Download.com and Mike Healan of SpywareInfo.com.

SUPERAntiSpyware finds many items (threats) that other software products do not identify. There is a 100% Free Edition that scans and removes for free just as SpyBot and Ad-Aware.

Here are some links with independent reviews of SUPERAntiSpyware, so you know that we are above board.

CNET Download.com Links/Reviews
http://www.download.com/SUPERAntiSpyware-Free-Edition/3000-8022_4-10523890.html?tag=lst-0-1
http://www.download.com/3000-7786-10295147.html

Link to Suzi Turner's (Owner of SpywareWarrior) ZDNET Blog where she mentions SUPERAntiSpyware as a worthy product:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/?p=818

Links to Mike Healan's Comments on our products:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/downloads.php?cat=popup#popup
http://www.superadblocker.com/product_reviews.html

Link to SpywareWarriors list of Comprehensive Tools Listing SUPERAntiSpyware:
http://www.spywarewarrior.com/uiuc/soft6.htm#Tools

We have daily updates to our defintions set to stay on top of the latest zero-day threats:
http://www.superantispyware.com/definitionupdatehistory.html

I had submitted SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition to Major Geeks several months ago. I would like to have SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition listed on Major Geeks as you do list our BootSafe product, which is also free.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to assist. Enjoy your weekend.

Nick Skrepetos
SUPERAntiSpyware.com
http://www.superantispyware.com

Major Attitude · May 28, 2006

Nick,
Thanks for taking the time. Ill try your product, some good info there. Due to the massive amount of poorly developed and spyware ridden anti-spyware apps, we rarely add any new ones, but I will take a look at both your product and the the other in the coming hours to see. I wish you had contacted me earlier, your links provide the extra info to make us want to look at your product, in other words, it stands out from the rest of the stuff normally submitted (you should see the garbage submitted here)

Anyone can contact me directly at tim@ this website for any problem!

SUPERAntiSpy said:

Hello all - Nick Skrepetos from SUPERAntiSpyware.com here. I don't believe the person who posted this meant any harm or ill-will towards MG - he is a concerned user of SUPERAntiSpyware - I know this because we were also contacted about this issue. I believe this is a simple case of a "False Positive" with other product.
Click to expand...

SUPERAntiSpy · May 28, 2006

Major Attitude said:

Nick,
Thanks for taking the time. Ill try your product, some good info there. Due to the massive amount of poorly developed and spyware ridden anti-spyware apps, we rarely add any new ones, but I will take a look at both your product and the the other in the coming hours to see. I wish you had contacted me earlier, your links provide the extra info to make us want to look at your product, in other words, it stands out from the rest of the stuff normally submitted (you should see the garbage submitted here)

Anyone can contact me directly at tim@ this website for any problem!
Click to expand...

No problem - I just wanted to make sure you knew we are not a "rogue" product. We have quite an aggressive development schedule, and if you look around the forums such as SpywareWarrior, SpywareInfo, Wilders Security, DSL Reports, etc. you will see we listen to our users and are always professional and polite in our responses.

If you run into any problems, or spyware/adware we don't remove, please contact me and we will update our database. As you know, it's impossible for any product to catch everything on a given day - but I believe the key is responsivness. We also have a unique feature that allows users to automatically report False Positives and our team immediately analyzes the issue - False Positives are part of anti-spyware life, and we recognize that and have accounted for it in our product. I hope others do the same in the future.

FYI, we also have a free service site here: http://www.fileresearchcenter.com that allows users to "see" what is running on their computer both good and bad and it provides an easy way to see if a computer you are using is "clean".

You guys have a great site, and I look forward to being part of it should you see find our product appropriate.

Nick Skrepetos
SUPERAntiSpyware.com
http://www.superantispyware.com

Major Attitude · May 28, 2006

I used Startup-Mechanic and it is simply a startup managing programs. This is not an area to tinker in if your unfamiliar with program names. Disabling them could cause anti-viruse, sound drivers, etc. not to load. Nothing is unchecked by default, you have to check it, regardless of their advice. I am not, at this time removing this program, it is no more harmful then any startup managing tool. CCleaner is easier to use because its a great, free drive cleaner with a registry scanner and startup manager included. Startup-Mechanic may not have info provided for contact because it was developed and offered for free and may not be updated any more.

I am not seeing the problems you had, and really need more then one complaint to verify this. At 20,000+ downloads, your the first one and I can not duplicate your problem.

Kostan, if there is anything else I am missing, or that you want to add, don't hesitate!

SuperAntispyware, your next on my list for evaluation

Major Attitude · May 28, 2006

Yes, sir, no argument there. We were getting a chuckle on the guaranteed spyware free buttons and promises websites are making, so we created our own promise, which is a little more in line with reality.

http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=21

SUPERAntiSpy said:

As you know, it's impossible for any product to catch everything on a given day - but I believe the key is responsivness.
Click to expand...

SUPERAntiSpy · May 28, 2006

Major Attitude said:

Yes, sir, no argument there. We were getting a chuckle on the guaranteed spyware free buttons and promises websites are making, so we created our own promise, which is a little more in line with reality.

http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=21
Click to expand...

I like your approach. One thing that you may notice with SUPERAntiSpyware, is that it may take longer to scan that other products - we have taken the following approach with the scanning system:

"If there was a violent criminal on the run in your city, would you want the police to only search "known" locations for the criminal, or to systematically search the city to find the criminal".

We choose the approach of systematically searching. It may take longer, but the idea here is to find the potentially harmful items and remove them, not just post a fast scan time.

We are seeing many new styles of infections that are using user mode hooks to bypass API calls and hide themselves, which aren't technically "rootkits", but somewhere in the middle. We have our new Kernel Direct system coming out in the next 2 weeks that handles these threats without having to start in Safe Mode, etc. These items are being installed in "non-standard" locations and other products will likely miss them (based upon our testing).

Nick Skrepetos
SUPERAntiSpyware.com
http://www.superantispyware.com

Major Attitude · May 28, 2006

Nick,
Lot of false positives with your program. As you can see in the screenshot, it is claiming I am infected with programs I am not. The folders it claims are infected do not exist and I do not have these infections. Frankly, I think tagging cookies as spyware is a bit misleading, the job of cookies is to track when you came, whats new when you came back, typically in a non identifiable way, but thats not the big issue. Technically, one could call cookies tracking cookies and make them sound bad, I guess thats how everyone makes their programs look like they work nowadays, so maybe you can address the false positives for me?

SUPERAntiSpy said:

I like your approach. One thing that you may notice with SUPERAntiSpyware, is that it may take longer to scan that other products - we have taken the following approach with the scanning system:

"If there was a violent criminal on the run in your city, would you want the police to only search "known" locations for the criminal, or to systematically search the city to find the criminal".

We choose the approach of systematically searching. It may take longer, but the idea here is to find the potentially harmful items and remove them, not just post a fast scan time.

We are seeing many new styles of infections that are using user mode hooks to bypass API calls and hide themselves, which aren't technically "rootkits", but somewhere in the middle. We have our new Kernel Direct system coming out in the next 2 weeks that handles these threats without having to start in Safe Mode, etc. These items are being installed in "non-standard" locations and other products will likely miss them (based upon our testing).

Nick Skrepetos
SUPERAntiSpyware.com
http://www.superantispyware.com
Click to expand...

SUPERAntiSpy · May 28, 2006

Major Attitude said:

Nick,
Lot of false positives with your program. As you can see in the screenshot, it is claiming I am infected with programs I am not. The folders it claims are infected do not exist and I do not have these infections. Frankly, I think tagging cookies as spyware is a bit misleading, the job of cookies is to track when you came, whats new when you came back, typically in a non identifiable way, but thats not the big issue. Technically, one could call cookies tracking cookies and make them sound bad, I guess thats how everyone makes their programs look like they work nowadays, so maybe you can address the false positives for me?
Click to expand...

This is very strange. There really should be none - and certainly not those. What version fo the defintion databases show in your system? They are on the main screen. We flag cookies as when we didn't people wrote horrible comments about us "missing" spyware that everyone else picked up.

Here is a blog entry I wrote on this subject:
http://superantispyware.blogspot.com/

If you click the "Explain Detected" item, you will see we clearly say that cookies are not "harmful". Since are product is free, we aren't trying to get anyone to purchase anything.

I just did test scans here on 5 different test machines and no false positives were detected - we will get to the bottom of this - we have not had any reports of False Positives either that have been unresolved.

Are you running other security products at the same time? We will figure our what is happening on your system.

Nick Skrepetos
SUPERAntiSpyware.com
http://www.superantispyware.com

Major Attitude · May 28, 2006

Appreciate your interest and time on this, so I am sure this will work out. I am running Windows Defender only as far as live protection. The cookie issue you addressed perfectly. You have no choice, I just like to mention it and move on. I see Microsoft does not flag them, so hopefully people will eventually get informed, but the wheels turn slowly, as you know.

All said, I did not update the databse, and it worked better with the database updated, not returning any of the previously mentioned items.

SUPERAntiSpy said:

This is very strange. There really should be none - and certainly not those. What version fo the defintion databases show in your system? They are on the main screen. We flag cookies as when we didn't people wrote horrible comments about us "missing" spyware that everyone else picked up.

Here is a blog entry I wrote on this subject:
http://superantispyware.blogspot.com/

If you click the "Explain Detected" item, you will see we clearly say that cookies are not "harmful". Since are product is free, we aren't trying to get anyone to purchase anything.

I just did test scans here on 5 different test machines and no false positives were detected - we will get to the bottom of this - we have not had any reports of False Positives either that have been unresolved.

Are you running other security products at the same time? We will figure our what is happening on your system.

Nick Skrepetos
SUPERAntiSpyware.com
http://www.superantispyware.com
Click to expand...

Kostan · May 28, 2006

Hello Major Attitude,

Not sure where youare, but in the US, it is memorial day weekend so i am away...
Click to expand...

I am a majorgeeks fan since 2003 and on this particular weekend (Memorial Day), I was showing to a couple of friends how and where I find all the useful and safe S/W , (MajorGeeks is the place)

I do, though take offence tothe... "what happened to MajorGeeks" comment
Click to expand...

I meant no offence "...that this was a slip up and it will not happen again, after all
Majorgeeks is the Internet's Top site for recommending software"how could I ?

I have never seen any software making comments of the nature that startup-mechanic did

not support these guys!
Click to expand...

have you?

In this case I dont use SymanteC
Click to expand...

I also do not use Symantec's S/W and I did not say anything about it in my post.

Finally it is the first time in the last 3 years that I see MG placing on it's front page and recommending a SW, 2 years old and from a company with no e-mail address and no telephone number.I mean this literally since before downloading any S/W I like from MG, I first visit the developers home page which MG provides.

Major Attitude I did not mean to offend MG , you are doing a great job so far.

Thank you

SUPERAntiSpy · May 29, 2006

Major Attitude said:

Appreciate your interest and time on this, so I am sure this will work out. I am running Windows Defender only as far as live protection. The cookie issue you addressed perfectly. You have no choice, I just like to mention it and move on. I see Microsoft does not flag them, so hopefully people will eventually get informed, but the wheels turn slowly, as you know.

All said, I did not update the databse, and it worked better with the database updated, not returning any of the previously mentioned items.
Click to expand...

Ok, that makes more sense. That is why we auto-update the database on install to resolve this exact type of situation. You must have elected not to update the database when it prompted. I will update the install package to have the latest rules set to avoid any false positives.

Thank you for taking the time to report this to me and work with me on this issue.

Nick Skrepetos
SUPERAntiSpyware.com
http://www.superantispyware.com

DavidGP · May 29, 2006

Hi Nick, good to have you onboard, very welcome to see any Dev that will address any issues that arise with his/her software in person, as you will have noticed we do take malware issues seriously here at MGs, so its good to have another product available in the fight against this.

I see your software made it into the listings on MGs http://www.majorgeeks.com/SUPERAntiSpyware_d5116.html

Major Attitude · May 29, 2006

Kostan, thanks for coming back and thanks for being a loyal visitor. It sucks that this happened, I just cant reproduce the bug that you had.

@Nick, the file was added, as I slept, it downloaded over 1,000 times. That's why we are always careful, 1,000 people in the last 8-10 hours downloaded and we test each and every program ahead of time so people like our friend Kostan here don't get burned. Thanks for your time, hope it keeps on downloading!

SUPERAntiSpy · May 29, 2006

Halo said:

Hi Nick, good to have you onboard, very welcome to see any Dev that will address any issues that arise with his/her software in person, as you will have noticed we do take malware issues seriously here at MGs, so its good to have another product available in the fight against this.

I see your software made it into the listings on MGs http://www.majorgeeks.com/SUPERAntiSpyware_d5116.html
Click to expand...

I have always liked MG and am happy to be listed! If there are any questions I can answer related to spyware/adware/malware or otherwise, I am always happy to help!

Nick Skrepetos
SUPERAntiSpyware.com
http://www.superantispyware.com

SUPERAntiSpy · May 29, 2006

Major Attitude said:

Kostan, thanks for coming back and thanks for being a loyal visitor. It sucks that this happened, I just cant reproduce the bug that you had.

@Nick, the file was added, as I slept, it downloaded over 1,000 times. That's why we are always careful, 1,000 people in the last 8-10 hours downloaded and we test each and every program ahead of time so people like our friend Kostan here don't get burned. Thanks for your time, hope it keeps on downloading!
Click to expand...

Thanks for listing us, I really appreciate it. I completely understand and respect your concerns with the anti-spyware/malware apps, there are so many scams out there and you have to protect your users.

Nick Skrepetos
SUPERAntiSpyware.com
http://www.superantispyware.com

DavidGP · May 29, 2006

Nick, dont know if you have had any feedback on your app working on MS Vista betas or not, but as I have downloaded it to test, I popped it on Vista Beta2 5384 and it works perfectly, nice app BTW.

one thing I know I will be asked when I show it to others is on the def updates, is it possible to have a progress bar showing the progress of the updating defs? ( small thing I know but I know many folk I will show this app too will ask for that option )

Major Attitude · May 29, 2006

1295 downloads rated a 4.2 by our readers, so can't complain there. If you ever add web links, we have a main button here:

http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=21

With links to others;

http://www.majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=2

but don't feel obligated. We also can handle bandwidth, so if you need an alternative download, we can help.

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Slander and Majorgeeks recommended software

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