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AVG Fakes User Agent, Floods the Internet
Slimy anti-virus provider AVG is spamming the internet with deceptive traffic pretending to be Internet Explorer. Essentially, users of the software automatically pre-crawl search results, which is bad, but they do so with an intentionally generic user agent. This is flooding websites with meaningless traffic (on Slashdot, we're seeing them as like 6% of our page traffic now). Best of all, they change their UA to avoid being filtered by websites who are seeing massive increases in bandwidth from worthless robots.
Perhaps, someone could elaborate on how they are slimey. This appears to be an attempt to protect people.
Might it be proper to call this "The Patriot Act Principle"?
Political ideology aside, if you don't consider some of the things this country has done since 9/11 to be slimy, you probably won't get how this is.
Honestly, your post was kind of stupid and reactionary, and wasn't really worth replying to, but since it was also hyperbolic and wrong I decided I'd tell you.
How's this for reactionary? YOU ARE AN IDIOT. Since you were being hyperbolic and wrong, I thought I'd tell you.
What AVG is doing is illegal, and I hope they get sued into oblivion by each and every one of the sites suffering due to their ignorance and malice.
I want to see whoever was ultimately responsible for this fiasco doing some hard time under the computer fraud and abuse act.
FACT: A distributed denial of service attack is a federal offense.
FACT: This is criminal negligence, at best.
Nuf sed.
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If your web site can't deal with the minor increase in traffic, I suggest you unplug the server and return it to Frito-Lay in the original Cracker Jack box that it was shipped in.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
(Dons flameproof underwear)
Sorry, moderators, if yer PHBs force you to use IE,
but that does NOT legitimize it.
You may go ahead and flame me now, for I am filled with love,
AND I'm wearing my flameproof underwear!
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
"If GM sold a car with a deadly fault which could be easily fixed with a small adjustment would you argue that because it can be easily fixed by anyone who takes the time to learn about the flaw and how to fix it that GM is not the responsible party?"
You're assigning blame, which, honestly, I don't care about. It seems important to you, but I don't care.
Is "GM" the saem group as "owners of GM vehicles"?
No, they are not, as I said. It appears that you are so consumed with blaming someone that it never occurred to you that people who are not consumed with blaming someone can see that they are two separate groups, and thus when you said "Yes, that is the complaint, and no, you're the one being disingenuous." you were wrong, the complaint that is actually being made is that users of AVG are spamming the internet, NOT AVG themselves.
You can say "it's AVG by proxy" or "it's AVG's fault" but that's only partially true as the problem could be solved without interacting with AVG AT ALL.
EIther you are able to differentiate between a company and its customers, or you are not. Telling someone else they "must be hallucinating" when it's your own failure to see the subtleties is arrogant and thoughtless, and makes you look like an ass.
Thanks, have a nice day.