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Last post Author Topic: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship  (Read 31382 times)

wraith808

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #25 on: September 14, 2012, 07:59 AM »
Hi,

A backup feature would only be relevant as an export-import option if it came with a restore feature that is available externally.  It would have to lack encryption (which goes against the expected internal encryption) and it would have to have the layout available, although that might be puzzled out, if there was not encryption.  Generally a backup is simply a mirror of the existing data file, which is useless for export-->import.

Sounds like simply another diversion, smoke and mirrors, from the Roboform crew.

Steven

That's why I didn't even bother posting the results here.  I'd been interested in roboform until this thread came up.  Now... not so much.

Renegade

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #26 on: September 14, 2012, 08:27 AM »
I'm sticking with f0dder's Fsekrit (small, fast, portable, done).

I'd never taken the time to look at it before, but DAMN! That's cool! :D I think I may find a use for it. ;) ;D

It's actually a perfect companion to Keypass.
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

Josh

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #27 on: September 14, 2012, 08:52 AM »
BdJ just removed a whole slew of comments.

Renegade

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #28 on: September 14, 2012, 08:57 AM »
BdJ just removed a whole slew of comments.

From the comments above, was it BDJ or the vendor?

I don't remember what the BDJ admin UI is like from the last time I had anything on BDJ, so I'm pretty much in the dark. I have a severe aversion to any kind of censorship (except self-censorship), and never looked the last time I was responding to comments when I had my software up there on BDJ.

Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

Renegade

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #29 on: September 14, 2012, 09:14 AM »
Anyways, I've mostly kept to the sidelines in this thread as Nico is a friend of mine (he runs BDJ).

But I was chatting with him briefly, and he sent me a link for a laugh for a site that blends pron and discount software (very NSFW):

NSFW - Site that blends discount software and pron


Anyways, it's in German, so our German speaking friends here will probably get more of a laugh than anyone, but worth a peek anyways. :D
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

wraith808

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #30 on: September 14, 2012, 09:17 AM »
BdJ just removed a whole slew of comments.

Did they?  You mean from the RF2G thread?  I didn't notice it any shorter... what were they in regards to?

40hz

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #31 on: September 14, 2012, 09:43 AM »
From the comments above, was it BDJ or the vendor?


You'd still need to hold BDJ somewhat responsible. "Your website = your responsibility." Either BDJ removed the comments - or they allowed them to be removed. And since the end result is the same no matter who is most directly responsible, BDJ can't simply dump it on some 3rd-party and walk away. Especially in the absence of any clearly stated policy about notifying users that the vendor is in control of everything that appears on the page - provided that actually is the case

Unfortunately, such a policy might have a negative effect on the perceived credibility of BDJ in general, so it would be interesting to have BDJ officially state exactly who gets to moderate comments and what the policy and process is for comment moderation. Because right now, only BDJ can clarify what's been going on with the RoboForm offer.

There's also chance this is all one big misunderstanding. But if so, it's BDJ that will have to straighten it out since the rest of us can't do much more than speculate.
 :)

(Note: For the record: I'm a fan of BDJ. I've bought things through them before and I've been quite happy overall with the experience.) :Thmbsup:
« Last Edit: September 14, 2012, 09:49 AM by 40hz »

Renegade

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #32 on: September 14, 2012, 10:24 AM »
From the comments above, was it BDJ or the vendor?


You'd still need to hold BDJ somewhat responsible. "Your website = your responsibility." Either BDJ removed the comments - or they allowed them to be removed. And since the end result is the same no matter who is most directly responsible, BDJ can't simply dump it on some 3rd-party and walk away. Especially in the absence of any clearly stated policy about notifying users that the vendor is in control of everything that appears on the page - provided that actually is the case

Unfortunately, such a policy might have a negative effect on the perceived credibility of BDJ in general, so it would be interesting to have BDJ officially state exactly who gets to moderate comments and what the policy and process is for comment moderation. Because right now, only BDJ can clarify what's been going on with the RoboForm offer.

There's also chance this is all one big misunderstanding. But if so, it's BDJ that will have to straighten it out since the rest of us can't do much more than speculate.
 :)

(Note: For the record: I'm a fan of BDJ. I've bought things through them before and I've been quite happy overall with the experience.) :Thmbsup:

I know what you mean there. I've just never looked that far into any of Nico's policies there. I've never had to. I've sold software through BDJ. But I've not had any problems there. So, I have a bit of a different perspective, as I've sold a lot more software than I've bought through BDJ. But I've never had a problem buying software through BDJ either. So, in my own experience, well, it is what it is. I do not want to comment any further as nothing I say can provide anything of value, either for or against anything.
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

Steven Avery

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #33 on: September 14, 2012, 07:23 PM »
 Hi,

Since the Bits position is clear as mud, I placed this on the forum, below the earlier post, although I do not see it yet.

Siber-Roboform and the ethics of crippling an export function.
http://www.bitsdujour.com/view/id=18437/

============================================

Hi,

Here is the Donationcoder thread.
Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=32221.0

We were trying to figure out whether the censorship (which apparently increased as the "sale" sent on) was from Nico and Bits directly ...., or indirectly by giving control of the comments to the vendor.

Please let us know, and you might want to read the Donationcoder thread and give us the Bits view there or here.  The credibility of Bits, I believe, is taking quite a hit by the censorship, which looks to be far greater than anything previously in moderation mode.

Steven

============================================

superboyac

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #34 on: September 15, 2012, 12:41 AM »
Roboform has been going down a somewhat negative path as of late, since v7 it seems.  First they pissed everyone off with the lifetime license reneg.  Now this behavior.  It's interesting how the "Import" function is right there in the File menu, and Export is not.

Steven Avery

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #35 on: September 16, 2012, 01:54 AM »
Hi,

Incidentally, the "moderation" really looks to be Bits (Nico), not the vendor. It has extended to a forum wipe-out of the post above, to posting on the SoftPerfect RamDisk thread.  I see absolutely no indication that the vendor is given such authority.  They may kvetch to Nico, and vendors can vary in clout, but it really looks to be a Bits thing.

Steven

SKA

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #36 on: September 16, 2012, 02:10 AM »
Grateful if anyone tried these non-cloud alternatives and can advise their comments ?

http://www.stickypassword.com/
http://www.password-depot.com/

Thanks
Ska

rjbull

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #37 on: September 16, 2012, 10:33 AM »
Grateful if anyone tried these non-cloud alternatives and can advise their comments ?
http://www.password-depot.com/
Mentioned in Upgrading RoboForm from v6 to v7: worthwhile?, and in several other DC threads.

Steven Avery

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #38 on: September 18, 2012, 10:38 PM »
Hi,

Bits continues to go downhill. You mentioned Nico, but the forum monitor during Censorship City seems to be more Roger Thomasson.  I saw a post was put in by someone that they felt that a software company, Blumental, had been snarky with them on a request (not the exact words, but representing the tone).  It was no big deal, I considered it interesting, good to know but very possibly "perception" or a bad hair day.

Then you go back and the post has been liquidated (not even a notice of deletion for rules violation).  That poster will be put on "moderation" and will probably wash their hands of Bits, knowing the game.

This is rather sad, since Bits had been one of the more vibrant daily discussion places, and they do not seem to realize what it means to go the censorship milquetoast route.  

We see so many sell-outs and partials.  Uniblue type stuff. Remember Yelp had its scandals.  Now I simply can not trust BitsDuJour to have honest discussion.  I know they now will be very quick to black out any comments that will put their sale items in an unfavorable light. The key now seems to be commission and sales $, make the vendor happy, integrity out the window.  Remember, with Roboform we were actually just trying to point out that crippling an export function is quite dubious.

Anyway, Donationcoder stays as lively and friendly and forthright as ever.

Steven

==================

PS.

In the forum, another poster had their post vanish, simply because it pointed out problems with the product. 
http://www.bitsdujou...18444/#comments18458
« Last Edit: September 18, 2012, 10:53 PM by Steven Avery »

superboyac

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #39 on: September 19, 2012, 10:50 AM »
A couple of other forums I used to visit have also increased the amount of censorship and moderation in the last couple of years.  It's a very annoying trend.  What used to be very open, friendly, and interesting discussions have all turned into boring, repetitive, and overly candy-positive nonsense threads.  It's like any discussion that has a potential for gray area issues freaks people out.

marcdw

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #40 on: September 22, 2012, 02:07 AM »
Regarding the export function, last time I used that was when I first setup LastPass a couple of years back. I no longer have a
LastPass account but when I though of getting it again I had read that RoboForm's export/print-to-html thingy was no longer
usable by LP.

Today, when I opened up a ticket with RF I found myself presented with an updated FAQ with questions/answers that aren't
on the main RF pages. One of them mentions the following:

Print List: save to HTML option
Q: How do I revert to the old style Print List dialog where I can save the list to HTML file?
A: Please un-check "Print List shows new dialog" checkbox in RoboForm → Options → User Data (you can find it in the lower part of the options window).

I haven't tried it yet but would this option provide output that's usable with LastPass? A quick cursory check and it does indeed
bring back the old dialog. Bad thing is if you have bookmarks turned on they also get generated in the list as part of logins.
I may just setup a new LP account just to test this out.
I need LP because RoboForm Lite (used on Solaris, Linux, SeaMonkey, 64-bit Fox variants on Win) is proving less than ideal.
I have a lot of logins and don't want to add them manually.

Marc

clean

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Re: Roboform, crippling the export function and Bits Du Jour censorship
« Reply #41 on: October 26, 2012, 05:32 AM »
First, I'm astonished that people are astonished about bitsdujour censorship. In fact, I've been censored there even 3 years ago, and have been censored there regularly since. You're entitled to ask why I continue to post there, well, sometimes I really want to know a detail about a product offered there, so I dare to ask for it there - instead of going into getting an avatar for the respective forum of the software in question - IF there is a forum -, and instead of sending a mail, fearing that it will not be answered in time. 80 p.c. of my questions there - having become rare, as well as my buys there -, are censored.

Yesterday and today, they have censored another one of my questions, and it intrigues me really - not bits, but the possible answer to my question, so I post it here again, kindly asking you to give your ideas on that matter.

Besides, after posting there, I've had the afterthought - since, remember, they just charge a software fee, not a monthly or annual fee, so they simply cannot have servers to do anything with your data on a continual basis - that their software simply and probably sends your data into such a mixup thing like TOR or something, which is free anyway, but their software would HIDE this fact from you, i.e. their software is a GUI hiding your TOR (or something similar) participation. Of course, there might be other possibilities.

My original question was, with respect to Hide IP Pro (on offer today):

Without giving away your trade secrets, could you comment a little bit about the way your product works? One of your competitors has very bad reviews since it's called extremely slow. So I wonder...

Your IP address is needed for the other site in order to answer you, which means, to send data back to you. So any IP address "hiding" must find other means.

First, we have proxy servers. They work this way: You send your data to the proxy server, which knows your IP address (in order to charge you resp. to count back your monthly data volume, AND in order to answer you); the proxy sends your request to the target site, with an IP from the proxy. The target site sends data back, to the proxy, which means, to that particular IP of the proxy; the proxy then sends you this data it has received from your target site.

Which means, no criminal offences because your "anonymity" is all relative: If you commit crimes et al., the proxy will give your real IP and identity not to the target site, but to the authorities.

Since all your traffic must  run thru the proxy, two times, in each direction (and some processing within the proxy, for replacing your IP, etc.), those proxies charge a monthly or annual fee and mostly have some monthly max. bandwith. I also suppose that the more such a proxy charges, the faster you'll get your data (since sufficient proxy servers for the data stream); if you get if for just a few bucks, they simply can't have enought bandwith.

If you want that for free, there's the alternative of mixing up many pc's, including yours, as a common "server", and mixing up all data for thousands of people, so that the target site doesn't know to whom the data sent. This is very slow and very unreliable, but for criminals, it has the "advantage" that there is no one commercial proxy to give away your identity, whatever you do.

Now for YOUR concept. You charge a one-time fee and say it's NOT a proxy. So what is it, how does it work, since, again, the target site or some technical thing in-between, call it a proxy or whatever, must "know" your IP in order to send data back to you. Curiously, googling for such systems only brings sites of your and of competing products, without any information what way these products work.

Some people in the web say you'rs best, within this range of products, but I don't dare rely upon such a thing without having the slightest idea how it guarantees my anonymity - if it simply HID my IP address, I wouldn't even see the target pages, so there must be more about it.