Morning all, Thanks Andrea for looping me in, in line comments.
2014-08-19 8:42 GMT+02:00 Andrea Pescetti <[email protected]>: > Well, if this is the case then SourceForge committed to removing unwanted > ads. They have even setup a dedicated channel for reporting this kind of > situations. I'm including Roberto in the conversation (Roberto, see below > for context) since he already took action in a few other cases discussed on > the dev list. > Regards, > Andrea. > > On 19/08/2014 Brian Barker wrote: > >> At 08:14 19/08/2014 +0800, Carl Wilson wrote: >> >>> When you download open office it comes with an attached piece of >>> software called Driver Manager which is spyware, they do not claim to >>> be affiliated with Apache but they seem to have succeed in attaching >>> Driver Manager to your download. >>> >> >> When people make suggestions such as this, they are normally dismissed >> with comments insisting that they simply must have downloaded OpenOffice >> from some unofficial source and thus obtained a contaminated product. >> (That hasn't happened this time so far, though.) May I make an >> alternative suggestion? >> >> When prospective users visit the official site and click on the download >> link, they are redirected to sourceforge.net. They need to wait a few >> second until the download begins, and even then they probably need to >> recognise their browser's warning bar requesting confirmation. They may >> not even know what to do with this at first. Meanwhile, they are >> presented with a Sourceforge page which generally advertises other >> possible free downloads. These advertisements usually contain a large >> green "Download" button. >> >> Surely it is quite likely that users will be distracted by a big green >> Download button and not, initially, notice some beige banner from their >> browser? They will click the big green button, understandably thinking >> that this will download the product they have come for: after all, this >> is still the official OpenOffice download site, isn't it? When they >> install the extra software along with OpenOffice, they will blame >> OpenOffice or - as here - remark that the rogue item has somehow >> infected the OpenOffice download. >> >> Note that DriverManager is indeed a program distributed by Sourceforge: >> see http://sourceforge.net/projects/drivermanager/ . There is >> suspiciously little information about it at the Sourceforge site. >> > I'm not familiar with that project, but it has 0 files < https://sourceforge.net/projects/drivermanager/files/?source=navbar> and it has been downloaded 0 times < https://sourceforge.net/projects/drivermanager/files/stats/timeline?dates=2014-08-01+to+2014-08-19>, I guess that's not the program you're talking about. Having said that we are committed to remove all malicious ads that do not clearly state what are they about. All I need to remove those it's a screenshot of the download page with the misleading ads and the link to which such ads points to. Most of the times we are able to get rid of that in few hours, only over the week-end it could take longer. >From Italy as of now I'm seeing an ads about "LogMeIn", an Anti-Virus trial or an invitation to monetize your downloads. None of them seems ambiguous or misleading and I'm not able to get a "green button" anyhow. If you can would you please send an email to me or to [email protected]? Thanks in advance and thanks for heads up. Roberto > >> Should there be some explanation and warning on the OpenOffice web site >> immediately before the transfer to Sourceforge ("Don't touch the >> button!"?) to help potential users avoid this trap? Should those >> responding to complaints be aware of this likely cause of the problem >> and not so quick to dismiss the user as having used ill-advised >> alternative download sources? >> >> Is this what happened to the current user? >> >> Brian Barker >> >>
