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LifeShield is a horrible company. They've been a horrible company ever since their name changed from "InGrid". I originally purchased my system when they were

LifeShield is a horrible company. They've been a horrible company ever since their name changed from "InGrid". I originally purchased my system when they were InGrid about 6 years ago. When I bought my system, it was advertised that the system would work with or without monitoring, which was a huge selling point for me. I wasn't sure if I really cared about the monitoring or not, since alerts go directly to your phone, email, etc. With those kinds of alerts, who needs someone else to call the cops for you? Anyway, so I invested in the system mostly for this reason. The InGrid site was great and the support staff was friendly and helpful - I always ended up talking to the same person and it was a nice experience. So I dumped a good $600 into sensors, cameras, etc. Fast-forward a few years and InGrid changes their name to LifeShield - I don't know if this was an acquisition or a brand change or what, but it brought on a slew of bad experiences. The support staff started sounding cold and uninterested. The website started going to shit, it was impossible to find things (try finding the online control panel to your system - that thing has changed URLs / names at least 5 times). But the two worst things: a few months ago, they raised my monitoring rates with no notification whatsoever. I saw my monthly charge come in $5 higher than it used to be. Obviously not a ton of money but I'd like to know why I'm paying $60 more per year for the exact same service. I called them up and they said "Well our rates are now different for those who aren't on a contract with us. If you'd like to go back to your normal rate, you'll need to sign a 3-year contract with us." What, The, Fuck. I don't want a contract, especially not with a company who randomly decides to raise rates of their longest customers without notification. So I decided to shut off the system monitoring. When I did so, to my horror I found that the entire system was bricked. The control panel says "Not Activated". They've once again fucked me, going back on their original statement that the hardware would work without monitoring. So I'm done with them. They're a shitty company who's gone down the toilet over the past few years. From the article here one of the LifeShield reps said they took a huge hit to their business because of some random clone on the web... that's probably bullshit. They're taking a huge hit to their business because of their shady business practices and lackluster product offerings.

nicksergeant 14y ago
To add to LifeShield's shady practices, it looks like most of their Twitter followers are spam accounts that they've created to boost their followers: https://twitter.com/#!/lshomesecurity/followers https://twitter.com/#!/lshomesecurity/followers Every follower has no bio, around 10-15 "follows" and about 1,500-1,800 followers. All generic photos, generic usernames, names, etc. What a fucking joke this company is.
- epoxyhockey 14y ago
  You are correct, sir: http://i.imgur.com/Ytf9b.png http://i.imgur.com/Ytf9b.png EDIT: The flat lines are the fake followers..
  - nicksergeant 14y ago
    Ha, awesome.
  - dakotasmith 14y ago
    Mind sharing the code that generated this? I am not the only person on HN who might like to have a way to examine real/presumedfake follower ratios for any number of reasons.
    - epoxyhockey 14y ago
      I would setup a webservice for it, but Twitter's API only allows 300 queries per hour. Just get the list of follower IDs via the API, sort them, then plot the deltas between each ID. Most Twitter follower networks registered thousands of Twitter accounts in a quick, automated fashion, making their entire list of Twitter ID's almost sequential. The plot shows the deltas of the Twitter IDs from 0 to the highest ID. What's even more amusing is that, once you've identified a network, you can deduce the entire list of their clients by what users the network already follows. Part of me wonders why Twitter doesn't just nuke the follower networks, since they are so easy to identify. But, on the other hand, it's almost comical looking at no-name Twitter users with tens of thousands of followers. There is no way to force a Twitter network to unfollow them, so they are stuck with the fake followers and all of the embarrassment that comes along with it. Though, the scary part is that one can attack an adversary by buying up 25K Twitter followers for them for a pretty insignificant price (maybe $100).

nicksergeant 14y ago

To add to LifeShield's shady practices, it looks like most of their Twitter followers are spam accounts that they've created to boost their followers: https://twitter.com/#!/lshomesecurity/followers https://twitter.com/#!/lshomesecurity/followers Every follower has no bio, around 10-15 "follows" and about 1,500-1,800 followers. All generic photos, generic usernames, names, etc. What a fucking joke this company is.

epoxyhockey 14y ago
You are correct, sir: http://i.imgur.com/Ytf9b.png http://i.imgur.com/Ytf9b.png EDIT: The flat lines are the fake followers..
- nicksergeant 14y ago
  Ha, awesome.
- dakotasmith 14y ago
  Mind sharing the code that generated this? I am not the only person on HN who might like to have a way to examine real/presumedfake follower ratios for any number of reasons.
  - epoxyhockey 14y ago
    I would setup a webservice for it, but Twitter's API only allows 300 queries per hour. Just get the list of follower IDs via the API, sort them, then plot the deltas between each ID. Most Twitter follower networks registered thousands of Twitter accounts in a quick, automated fashion, making their entire list of Twitter ID's almost sequential. The plot shows the deltas of the Twitter IDs from 0 to the highest ID. What's even more amusing is that, once you've identified a network, you can deduce the entire list of their clients by what users the network already follows. Part of me wonders why Twitter doesn't just nuke the follower networks, since they are so easy to identify. But, on the other hand, it's almost comical looking at no-name Twitter users with tens of thousands of followers. There is no way to force a Twitter network to unfollow them, so they are stuck with the fake followers and all of the embarrassment that comes along with it. Though, the scary part is that one can attack an adversary by buying up 25K Twitter followers for them for a pretty insignificant price (maybe $100).