why not just post the Truth (as you know it) and overcome the Consensus (which has arrived at an incorrect position)? Is it because as a member of Zango your claim to know the Truth would not be credibly received?
That's exactly the problem, actually. We've been trying to tell our story as much as we can -- and as you point out, it's pretty much discounted because people from Zango are the only ones defending us. When people who appear to be independent are pretty much universally critical, and the only people defending are perceived to have an agenda -- that's a pretty hard bias to overcome. Key to my position, of course, is that the folks who are critical only appear to be independent and objective. There are lots of ways to grind an axe that don't have anything to do with what company you work for. Probably the most powerful is self-righteousness, the universal human lust to be in the right, and thus able to criticize someone else as being in the wrong -- but that's only one particular axe of many.
You know, I agree with a lot of what your post says and I've even defended Zango in the past when blatantly false information has been put into circulation.
However, given the general tone of the piece - talking about spurious and / or misleading information - my eyes rolled when I saw you linking to, of all things, a page from Spywareguide with the insinuation that a FaceTime app, X-Cleaner, is little more than a 30 dollar ripoff demanding payment as the "only" way to remove a Zango application without using Zangos own uninstaller.
X-Cleaner actually attempts to uninstall an unwanted piece of software/adware/whatever with the products OWN uninstaller first, before resorting to ripping it out by other means.
Furthermore, the Free version of X-Cleaner actually does remove something related to Zango without payment, Zango Messenger, according to one of my researchers.
So not only do we *not* attempt to bypass your uninstaller and thus break your application via a borked removal where possible, we *don't* demand cash to remove every single one of your products either.
In fact, the page you link to doesn't even *mention* downloading an application, or paying, or anything ELSE for that matter.
Yet here we are, linked to in an article talking about misleading information, "official looking postings" and poor uninstalling practices.
I think its entirely fair for the Spywareguide page to inform customers what applications remove the program mentioned, don't you? It's hardly like the page is beating you over the head with BUY THIS NOW though, is it?
So again, of all the crappy applications, spurious marketing gimmicks and generally poor pieces of information out there that you could have linked to, why did you decide to run with a link to Spywareguide in such a context?
http://ftc.gov/os/caselist/
05231...30cmp061103.pdf
Enough said.
Hey there, Christopher (aka Paperghost). We meet at last! 
Thanks for your comments and clarifications. I wasn't aware that X-Cleaner actually used Zango's own uninstall, though that makes sense at some level.
I certainly don't want to discount the value of scanning applications in general. I use them myself, and when they do what they say, they provide a valuable service. Although I haven't tried X-Cleaner, I have no reason to doubt that it's a valuable tool in general.
My real beef, if you want to get down to it, is all the scanning apps that DON'T do what they say. We've got numerous documented examples of popular, mainstream scanning apps which automatically uninstall Zango even after you've explicitly instructed them not to. Sigh. Even when our uninstall was admittedly more complicated than it should have been, Zango has never behaved like that, i.e., done the exact opposite of what the user requested. I can't imagine the opprobrium that would be heaped upon us if we tried to pull something like that -- and it's pretty darn frustrating that these other applications can get away with it.
What I find pretty darn frustrating is that Zango has gotten away with ripping people off and have only paid the pittance of 3 million bux, probably less than your shares worth of stock.
FTC should be ashamed of themsleves and their overall record of penalizing the likes of scumware slimeballs like Zango and all who work for them.
Hold on a second there Ken.
So not only did you pick on SpywareGuide/X-Cleaner, but you did so without even bothering to try it?. Kinda seems a little pointless (not to mention giving yourself and your article even less credibility than you already have - which is something I didn't think possible) don't you think?.
Oh and FYI, you failed to answer Paperghosts question as to why you picked on SpywareGuide in the first place ;o)
To Steven: I actually didn't intend to pick on X-Cleaner as a product: my point wasn't that X-Cleaner isn't a good product (for all I know, it does a fine job), but rather, to point out that the best way to uninstall Zango doesn't involve spending $30 to acquire it or any other package. That's all, really. Unless I'm missing something, I can know that without having actually installed X-Cleaner, or SpyBot, or any of the other 50 or so scanning apps out there. Or do you disagree?
As to why I picked on SpywareGuide -- in all honesty, it was mostly because the page in question turned up fairly high in the results of a Google query on "uninstall Zango" (or words to that effect). (It was also partly to tweak paperghost a little, at which I apparently succeeded admirably. Hopefully he doesn't mind too much -- he seems like a nice guy, and I enjoy his blog.) Not much more to it than that. Certainly nothing about the page in question is technically inaccurate. If a scanning app can get you to shell out $30 to do something you could do more easily yourself -- hey, it's a free country. But hopefully nobody minds if I point out the alternative .
Care to comment on any of this http://www.zingozango.com/ ? Such a fine company your defending will go after some poor guy like this.
I have read through your comments Ken and it is quite obvious your a blatant liar. Zango is a menace and that is the reason software targets it. It doesn't have a thing to do with whether or not the programs are free or paid versions. It's about your nasty software and how you target kids and the unsuspecting naive victims to put the crap on their systems.
The FTC sees this too. Although they let you off too easy. Why does the company need to change it's name? Have you heard of Ben Edelman? Google that.
Don't even think for a minute your going to slide on your bullshit.
To JeanInMontanta: Sorry that you don't think I'm being honest. That's not something I'm usually accused of, but since you don't know me, I understand that you don't have anything else to go on. (Usually I'm accused of being too honest, i.e., lacking more tact than candor.) I can understand that you might disagree with me, substantively, on various points or other, but I do try to tell the truth as best as I understand it. Like most folks, I probably don't always succeed, but . . . well, I try.
As for the specific issues you raise, I may try to address some of those in a later post. Unless I can convince you that I'm at least trying to be honest, I'm not sure anything I say will be a lot of help to you, but I'm willing to give it a shot. In the meantime, thanks for taking a minute to read my blog and initiate a conversation.
"my point wasn't that X-Cleaner isn't a good product (for all I know, it does a fine job), but rather, to point out that the best way to uninstall Zango doesn't involve spending $30 to acquire it or any other package. That's all, really."
I think if we were talking about some sort of standalone app - and I'm no longer talking about X-Cleaner here, just removal tools in general - that did nothing else *but* remove Zango (either by attempting to use the products own installer or ripping it out) then this would be an entirely fair point.
Having said that, do you think most people out there download scanner / removal tools purely to get rid of Zango, or to get rid of the nameless wonder that's hooked into the browser, dumped fifteen EXEs in the System32 folder and started firing spam about penis extensions to old women in Canada? To me, these people are mostly doing it for the latter, and of course in the grand scheme of things, they might have picked up Zango somewhere and decided they might not want it anymore and hose that too.
I've said often that I'm not overly concerned about the security implications of having Zango on a PC - really, there are bigger fish to fry and nastier things out there to worry about nowadays. The thing that's always made me stand guard on Zango, and quite likely other researchers too, is that the danger hasn't really come from your own application, but the super dubious affiliates you've ended up partnering with in the past.
When you get into the realms of (say) Yapbrowser, for example, I think its fair to say that people would be twitchy about a future Zango install, on the basis that they're sitting there wondering if today is going to be another Yapbrowser, or Quicktime Worm, or Botnet day purely because someone in quality control didn't do a good enough job of working out that the affiliate is actually some crazy porn baron in Russia with an anything-goes policy.
As long as you keep your affiliates in check, you'll notice the amount of Zango related writeups on my site at least go down. Sure, I'll flag those "anonymous" Wiki edits and various other things (and I notice now that when someone from Zango edits their Wiki page they give clear notification of who they are and suggest changes first, which can only be a good thing), but in terms of the screwball affiliate installs of old, if they're not happening, I (and probably many others) don't need to be writing about you and can devote our time to worrying about the rising trade in extremely dubious Adware vendors in China, the Korean hackers teaming up with crackers from the States and the never ending stream of kiddy pr0n groups coming out of Russia.
I would honestly be happy if I never had to write about Zango ever again, and I'm guessing you would be too 
Fair comment?
Thanks for your comments. See my further response here:
http://smithkl42.blogspot.com/20...mon-
ground.html
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