3 ms·

Why not name them?

devrandomguy 9y ago
That would identify the GP to within a small group (the meeting). They probably worked under an NDA. It would be great if an unrelated leak were to happen, though.
- teej 9y ago
  I'm not anonymous. You can identify me by going to my profile if you'd like. To be completely honest, I don't remember. It was 2 years ago and I sit on lots of these pitches. I remember pushing back on them about the methodology, hearing how the sausage was made, and noping right out. I want my team to be able to spend marketing dollars efficiently but I would never compromise my ethics to do so. Luckily I work somewhere that I can give a justified 'no' and keep my job.
  - javajosh 9y ago
    > Luckily I work somewhere that I can give a justified 'no' and keep my job. That is lucky! Where do you work?
    - softawre 9y ago
      > You can identify me by going to my profile if you'd like.
      - javajosh 9y ago
        Actually, I can't identify you from your HN profile. I guess I could google your username or something, but I'm a little unclear why you wouldn't just, you know, say where you work.
        ucaetano 9y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=teej https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=teej Currently - head of data engineering at Minted
    - OJFord 9y ago
      > > [I'm not anonymous. You can identify me by going to my profile if you'd like. ...] Luckily I work somewhere that I can give a justified 'no' and keep my job. > That is lucky! Where do you work?
  - yuhong 9y ago
    I wonder if it was AVG.
flipp3r 9y ago
If I could take a guess I'd say its likely to be Avast, which has multiple browser extensions that send all your browsing activity to them, while simultaneously offering a service to remove other browser extensions. They'll even set their own search engine as your default homepage.
brudgers 9y ago
If I had to guess, it's all of them. By "them" I mean all the anti-virus packages that are targeted at consumers and small business. That seems to have been part of the business model starting over a decade ago. My guess is that the negative effects of anti-virus is what prompted Microsoft to first build free products and then eventually roll anti-virus into Windows. I'd put it this way. My first inkling that something was wrong was when Norton Anti-Virus shifted to a subscription model and charged me full retail for a renewal back around 2006. What does disabling virus updates for ordinary users with the explicit intent of leaving them vulnerable says about a company's attitude in regard to long term trust? I left Norton for Kaspersky and paid it protection money for a few years. It seemed refreshing at first. One day, a few years later, I learned how to look at my LAN traffic and saw how often I was sending data to its servers. It was more often than seemed reasonable. That's about the time Microsoft started providing its own free anti-virus and I started switching machines...the Windows XP Professional x64 box stayed on Kaspersky despite my misgivings until I upgraded it to Windows 7 because Microsoft did not port its anti-virus to that platform. Spyware is often the basis for free software. Adobe Reader and Google Chrome and the Ask toolbar that shipped with Java are pretty obvious examples.

Why not name them?

That would identify the GP to within a small group (the meeting). They probably worked under an NDA. It would be great if an unrelated leak were to happen, though.

teej 9y ago
I'm not anonymous. You can identify me by going to my profile if you'd like. To be completely honest, I don't remember. It was 2 years ago and I sit on lots of these pitches. I remember pushing back on them about the methodology, hearing how the sausage was made, and noping right out. I want my team to be able to spend marketing dollars efficiently but I would never compromise my ethics to do so. Luckily I work somewhere that I can give a justified 'no' and keep my job.
- javajosh 9y ago
  > Luckily I work somewhere that I can give a justified 'no' and keep my job. That is lucky! Where do you work?
  - softawre 9y ago
    > You can identify me by going to my profile if you'd like.
    - javajosh 9y ago
      Actually, I can't identify you from your HN profile. I guess I could google your username or something, but I'm a little unclear why you wouldn't just, you know, say where you work.
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=teej https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=teej Currently - head of data engineering at Minted
  - OJFord 9y ago
    > > [I'm not anonymous. You can identify me by going to my profile if you'd like. ...] Luckily I work somewhere that I can give a justified 'no' and keep my job. > That is lucky! Where do you work?
- yuhong 9y ago
  I wonder if it was AVG.

flipp3r 9y ago

If I could take a guess I'd say its likely to be Avast, which has multiple browser extensions that send all your browsing activity to them, while simultaneously offering a service to remove other browser extensions. They'll even set their own search engine as your default homepage.

brudgers 9y ago

If I had to guess, it's all of them. By "them" I mean all the anti-virus packages that are targeted at consumers and small business. That seems to have been part of the business model starting over a decade ago. My guess is that the negative effects of anti-virus is what prompted Microsoft to first build free products and then eventually roll anti-virus into Windows. I'd put it this way. My first inkling that something was wrong was when Norton Anti-Virus shifted to a subscription model and charged me full retail for a renewal back around 2006. What does disabling virus updates for ordinary users with the explicit intent of leaving them vulnerable says about a company's attitude in regard to long term trust? I left Norton for Kaspersky and paid it protection money for a few years. It seemed refreshing at first. One day, a few years later, I learned how to look at my LAN traffic and saw how often I was sending data to its servers. It was more often than seemed reasonable. That's about the time Microsoft started providing its own free anti-virus and I started switching machines...the Windows XP Professional x64 box stayed on Kaspersky despite my misgivings until I upgraded it to Windows 7 because Microsoft did not port its anti-virus to that platform. Spyware is often the basis for free software. Adobe Reader and Google Chrome and the Ask toolbar that shipped with Java are pretty obvious examples.