(formerly)tangentmind.org

Did I mention that aurora is nasty? Aurora is malicious software that will install on a person's computer without them knowing it. It is made by ABI Network/a better internet/Direct Revenue. There are also many other websites and products inside the collective, but I'm not sure if they are all owned by the same company or are just partners. abetterinternet.com claims they have the "best free downloads" and "we have given millions of people access to great software in exchange for advertising." What they of course mean by that is that they let people download free software, but don't tell people that it's going to autamtically download and install all sorts of monitoring and hijacking and regenerating software. They have this large collective of adware and spyware programs and websites.

Worse than that, they have a lot of programs in the collective like winantivirus, popupguard, adwatcher(some info here) which basically ads it's own viruses to your computer and other pop up and anti virus software which does the opposite of what it's supposed to do. The "removal tool" for the aurora software, as well as other malicious software, removes the older maliciuos software and then ads newer software as well as forcing you to give them your e-mail.

Don't believe me? Read http://www.webhelper4u.com/tnewswritigs/mypctuneupmain.html

That website only tells a small fraction of the story though.

Also, the websites claim things like " Just as popular TV shows and magazines are made possible through advertising revenue, many of the world's leading content and application developers are able to offer their products free to consumers only because of the advertising supplied by Direct Revenue.

The free search, content and software offerings that we support are enjoyed by some 20 million Internet users all over the world.

Direct Revenue never collects identity-specific information. In fact, we favor industry regulations designed to protect privacy, we're a TRUSTe member in good standing, and we support HR 2929, the best known of the consumer protection measures now pending before Congress.

Direct Revenue also makes it easy to remove our ad targeting applications at any time, either through the Add/Remove function found on all PC's, or by using MyPCTuneup. And our live customer support service - the first in the industry - is available in case you need assistance."

Which is mostly a lie. If they're a member of the TRUSTe then I don't trust TRUSTe.

A lot of the software that harbors this evil filth are sitting on sites like download.com too.

The world isn't a safe place with evil people like this around. They probably use the software they put on people's computers to make a distributed super computer that they're using to plot to kill the jew or blacks or asians or babies or puppies or something. Evil bastards.

If you ever see a popup that says something about removing popups or tuning your pc or cleaning your pc or removing antiviruses or adware or spyware or anything like that it's a good indication that it's not software you should get. If it says "your not safe", that means you're not safe because you just received their ad and they're out to get you.

You can avoid all this of course, by using a Macintosh or Linux. Ubuntu is a pretty good all purpose linux distro. With linspire and clicknrun you might not ever have to touch the console(unless of course you want software that's not in the clicknrun warehouse). If you insist on using windows follow the instructions here and you might be able to sleep better at night.