Tuesday, September 22, 2009

A WORD TO THE WISE:

Mommy has something to say today, so we turn over our bloggie to her:


This applies to you if you are on FaceBook, and play any of their games and/or ever decide to click an ad for an online game.

WARNING:


Whatever you do, do NOT sign up for any online games with GAMEVANCE.com.. Here's the full explanation of why, as I sent it to Face Book under 'report an ad':


"There are some 3rd-Party applications and games running on FaceBook, and then there are those which come up as ads. I believe this complaint falls into that category, and this is an ad/company that FaceBook should block/disallow in order to retain its credibility as a safe venue.


"Specifically, the outfit in question is “GAMEVANCE.” They run the game “Duck Hunt” among their other ‘free online games’ offerings. In order to play, they require a person to sign up for an ‘account.’ This is free, but they ask for you to supply your e-mail address.

"Yesterday, I did sign up, and attempted to play a few games. The site is not user-friendly at all, because after you have finished a game, (screen reads, “game over”), you cannot open another one; it tells you that you already have a game open, and must close it first. Unfortunately, there is no way to do this. No ‘close’ button, and by the time this message is displayed, the game you were playing is no longer visible, anyway. The only way to effectively ‘close’ the game is to log out and start again. A nuisance, at best.



"Yet, that is not the worst part. The major problem with this outfit is that they ARE guilty of SPYWARE and ADWARE.

"I had not had my “account” for even 2 hours, when I noticed, when checking one of my blogs, that all of a sudden, one of the words well down in an article was underlined as a hyperlink, and a mouse-over brought up a “GAMEVANCE” search engine dialog box!!!!


"Now, HOW did they get INTO my blog, and mess with it to do this??? Because they are SPIES!!! How do I know this? Simple! In signing up for anything that I’m not quite sure I trust, I use a DIFFERENT e-mail address than I do for anything else. No one knows about what this e-mail addy is; I don’t tell anyone. It is a DIFFERENT e-mail than the one I use for both my blogs and my FaceBook account!

"ERGO---this PROVES that “GAMEVANCE” snooped into my computer, and found all my other items, and without permission, inserted their invasive link into my blog!!! This is INTOLERABLE, UNACCEPTABLE, AND UNETHICAL IN THE EXTREME!

"FaceBook should take whatever steps are necessary to IMMEDIATELY block/cancel/remove “GAMEVANCE” and any and all of its apps from any connection with FaceBook.


"This information WILL BE POSTED everywhere else on the web I can think of…including copies to the ‘big 3’ broadcast corporations. “GAMEVANCE” is a dangerous player, and needs to be taken down post-haste!"


…Liz

Thanks for reading my rant...and please feel free to re-post THIS article, (or excerpts/salient points therefrom), anywhere else you like. We don't need anymore "players" of this nature online.




P.S. --I just found out that one of my acquantances on FACEBOOK had the SAME kind of experience with these clowns...only worse...she had to take her computer in for repair to clean out all the crap this outfit installed without permission!! 

NOT a good company--let's do all we can to spread the word & take them DOWN!








8 comments:

dArtagnan Rumblepurr/Diego Hamlet Moonfur said...

We are sending lots of HISS and SCRATCH to the evil people... have you got a good virus scanner?

Unknown said...

Thanks, Rumbles and Inigo--yes, I do have an excellent virus scanner, AND a hubby who knows computers inside and out...and everything is ok.

It was just an extreme annoyance...and I daresay, this warning applies worldwide, as FB and its apps are also available worldwide.

Unknown said...

Hi... I understand your frustration but just wanted to reassure you that GameVance did not hack into your blog or anything that. What you saw on your blog, the hyperlinks, is something called "in text advertising". If anybody visits your blog who DOES NOT have GameVance installed, they will not see the "in text advertising". Only people with GameVance installed on their computer see it. The best way to describe it is as a kind of .. overlay.. of your blog's content.. which is not the same as GameVance hacking into your blog and changing stuff.

Oh, and the first screen of the GameVance installer that you used to install GameVance states:

"By clicking the "Continue" button below, you electronically agree to the GameVance EULA, and Privacy Policy, and you agree to receive Advertisements through the GameVance software in the form of **text links**, banners and pop up/under Ads"."

Photo of installer screen at Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/encyclopedia/en-us/i/41358fc1fded4da5.jpg

Jans Funny Farm said...

Thanks for this. Am putting a link to it in today's JFF post.

Unknown said...

Hi, Secret.
That may be the case, but that 'disclaimer' is worded in such a way as to sound as it you will be putting up with pop-ups while playing ON THEIR SITE.

It does NOT specifically state that these links and so on will appear in OTHER places to which you have PASSWORD ACCESS.

And my concern with this is, as I said, I used a DIFFERENT, ANONYMOUS e-mail to sign up for the game, and it is NOT the same e-mail that I use for my blogs. THEREFORE---they HAD to snoop into my computer to find out how to get into a blog unconnected to the e-mail address I used for their site!

Furthermore, another acquaintance of mine, on FB, (I put a "P.S." in my article) had HER computer stuffed so full of crap BY GAMEVANCE, that she had to take it in to Best Buy's "Geek Squad" to be cleaned out. ... AND THEY WERE ABLE TO POSITIVELY IDENTIFY THE SOURCE AS GAMEVANCE.

So yes, they ARE snooping into people's computers, and disclaimers notwithstanding, that is just plain unethical.

Chris Tina's Head said...

When I downloaded gamevance several months ago, my computer got pretty close to crashing. From one of the virus sites: "At the moment of tests, Gamevance is detected as parasite by such security programs like NOD32 Antivirus, SpywareHunter, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Microsoft Threat center." Here's a safe removal method: http://www.2-spyware.com/remove-gamevance.html

Unknown said...

Chris Tina's Head, THANK YOU! That is a valuable link. I will pass it along.

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