Originally Posted by jayeff

It's "just business", right?

Wrong.

However popular GFY is, many webmasters do not visit here. Many who do, do not read every thread. So in addition to the impact this kind of crap has on the credibility of our industry as a whole, there have to be many people sending traffic to (in this case) Epic, without knowing what their surfers are getting.

And it is crap, regardless of what some are saying here about it being easy to uninstall. When it comes to running a PC, never underestimate how hopeless many people are at dealing with anything out of the ordinary. And let's not be obtuse, that is exactly what this nagware, ransomware, adware, call it what you like, is preying upon. It is designed specifically to catch people who will not easily be able to get rid of it.

All this for what? Because the owner of this software offered a few bucks more than another potential advertiser? The very fact that someone from Epic felt it necessary to check the thing out, makes it clear he knew it was at least in the gray end of the market. So apparently he made a conscious decision to risk upsetting visitors to his own site, as well as inviting the totally predictable reaction from some webmasters. That may be business, but it's bad business.

We are having to work our asses off today, in large part to restore the credibility we knowingly destroyed yesterday. Yet every time someone dangles an extra dollar bill if only we support the next dubious (at best) practise, we buy into it. Pathetic.