Underhanded behaviour.

[rossw]

I noticed quite recently a change to this website.
It "concerned" me that there was a lot more activity than in the past.
Whoever has asked for or authorised the viglink tracking, the call-home code, pinging and other sureptitious code to be included in this site should be shot.
I'm currently of two minds - one to simply leave this forum and never return. The other to actively block every darn reference to the malware that has been included.
 
Whoever it is didn't do it by accident. It's done specifically in the promise of getting money.
Their claim "Unobtrusive monetization that won't break your site." is bullshit. It may not BREAK the site, but those of us who have even a passing interest in how our information is being misused, and how OUR PRIVACY IS BEING COMPROMISED find this abhorrent.
 
Anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about - and is interested, feel free to ask.
Those who did it.... feel free to REMOVE IT.

 

[electron]

I am somewhat confused by your post, but I'll answer here anyways, since you think you are calling me out.
 
1) VigLink is just an affiliation program, every website runs this type of program.
2) This has been in place for YEARS, so I am sorry you JUST noticed this.  Running this site costs a lot of money, so yes, CT joined a well known/respected affiliate program.
3) I am in the chat room 24/7, you have been as well, and have personally chatted with me, so you know I am involved with the site, so I really don't understand why you didn't talk to me first before posting here, you are just making people feeling uncomfortable at this point.
4) VigLink isn't compromising anything.   If it is, then please show me with hard evidence before (falsely) accusing of someone.  If somehow VigLink is doing something nefarious, then it wasn't intentional, and something went wrong on their side.  CT does NOT share ANY data with anyone.
5) People have known me for years, you JUST recently joined, an already assume I have bad intentions.
6) If anyone has questions about this, PLEASE ASK before assuming.  Nothing is going on, and I won't be censoring anything..

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Yes, to reemphasize what Dan stated above, CocoonTech has been in existence as a self help, do it yourself forum for over nine years and we currently serve over 12,000 members and strives to have their best interest in mind, especially with our forum's theme of home automaton, security and theater!

 

[CAI_Support]

Ross,
 
I noticed Viglink following the link posted on this site.  But that seems just getting referral credit from site like Amazon or eBay.  That is probably noticeable when you post a new link to the forum, since Viglink will verify that link.  If you didn't post any link, you will not notice any.
 
No offense, but I think getting referral credit from retail stores is a lot better than Google tracking.  If you visited any site tracked by Google, that is much detailed, tracking every link you visited, eveny content you viewed.  From what I experenced, that is not the case here.  To be honest, I think using any Google sponsored browser, or android os based phone, you will be tracked for every visit by Google. Same to the iPhone users, Apple track everywhere you go with iPhone or iPad.   So many people like "google" things, but that is being tracked for every mouse or keyboard move. If you use gmail, every thing you typed in that or received through gmail is filtered and sorted and stored.  IE browser is a lot safer in my opinion, from being tracked point view.

 

[dgage]

I've been on this forum for about 6 months now and I really like this community and board.  There are some definite pros that hang out here giving invaluable knowledge with detailed answers along with other amateurs that have a wide variety of knowledge to share.  I've actually offered Dan a donation to help pay for Cocoontech and he passed on the offer.  Dan seems like a great guy and that is reflected in the people that post on this board.  Of course, quality can change over time so if an affiliate is doing something concerning, it should definitely be investigated but that would start with specific examples and evidence of malfeasance.
 
Keep up the great work on this site Dan!
 
David

 

[electron]

Ok, so I give up, this is the response I just got in the chat room.  If anyone else has questions, please don't hesitate to contact me via the many methods which are available.  I consider this case closed unless someone does find a problem, otherwise, it is part of the javascript problem I have been dealing with in the last 2 weeks.
 

[16:19:10] <RossW> mate, I tried to catch you several times yesterday but didn't manage (obviously)
[16:19:56] <RossW> whatever it is on the forum is something that has changed in the last few days. If the links to viglink have been there forever, then fine - but the behaviour has changed.
[16:20:32] <electron> so you only try for a few hours to get a hold of me, can't do it (ignoring the fact we are in different time zones), and just make accusations like that, and now you even admit it might NOT be the issue? that is NOT cool!
[16:20:38] <RossW> when I refresh the site now it goes into a javascript initiated http ping cycle that is *new*
[16:21:02] <electron> well if you took the time to read the 2 other threads about a bug in the feedback forum, you woudl know I am dealing with a javascript problem I haven't been able to figure out

 

[rossw]

Quoted out of context and incomplete. Be that as it may.

I just came back to update the post and say that this is a known issue caused apparently by an unrelated script error.
I've been going back through my proxy logs and can see that indeed the tracking stuff I was referring to HAS been here for quite some time, but was only executing ONCE on a page load, which didn't attract any attention.
 
Near as I can see, something started (times in UTC+11)  around 14-Jan-13 17:15:22 with intermittently, the original request plus one more immediately after, but which came good within a couple of hours.
 
2 days later 16-Jan-13 16:01:26, it happened again. This time original plus one and sometimes two additional.
 
By 18-Jan-13 10:41:12 the original was followed by 4 more requests every 4 seconds - but not every refresh produced the effect.
From 20-Jan to 31-Jan I see no evidence of the problem at all.
 
It's possible some of the above are "false positives" as I may have had multiple windows open - I wasn't digging that deeply into the logs to identify the referrer.
 
It started in earnest on 01-Feb-13 between 15:51:12 (only 1 request) and 18:03:51 where each refresh generated a variable number of re-requests (around 14) in the 30 seconds following a refresh.
 
This was with Firefox 18.0.1, although I've just checked and see similar behavior (but less pronounced) with Safari.

 

[az1324]

I see this as well as constant ajax refreshing on forum thread pages in FF.

 

[TonyNo]

See here...
http://cocoontech.com/forums/topic/22918-server-issues/
 
and here...
http://cocoontech.com/forums/topic/23018-constant-updating/