Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 16:44:12 -0400 To: john@badtux.org From: Scott [deleted for privacy] Subject: Evidence Eliminator Hi Eric, This is a long story, but true! My name is Scott [deleted for privacy]. I'm envious of your programming expertise. I have a degree in electrical engineering, but work on the hardware end of things. Wish I'd gotten into computers in the 70's instead of the 80's. I would like to commend you for maintaining your web page. You are doing what I see as a great service in exposing some really horrible people over in the UK who are, IMHO, not fit to be in business, no matter how well their product might work. I thought you'd like to hear about my recent experience with these people and their program. Feel free to use any or all of my story on your site. It is completely true, and I would be happy to send you copies of the email correspondence I have had with them. First, let me say that I have VERY strong beliefs about personal computer privacy and the freedom of intrusion by anyone; especially Government snoops. I'm not a prude, and have no problems with folks, like myself, who wish to visit 'adult' sites and download legal pictures. BTW, there are only TWO groups of people who say they don't download pictures of naked women off the internet. 1. Gay men 2. Liars Downloading and later erasing files did not, of course, completely remove the files from my system. I was looking for a simple program to automatically "wipe" the file after it was erased as well as wipe unused disk space, internet cache, etc. ( I have young children in the home who are computer literate ! ) Evidence Eliminator's advertising promised to do this and more. So I downloaded the program, sent them my Mastercard number, and obtained the password to unlock the program. I installed the program following their instructions to the letter. When I ran the program I accepted their 'default' settings (which I reviewed and deemed applicable to my situation). After running the program, I discovered to my ABSOLUTE HORROR that it had deleted the boot record on one of my two hard drives and erased both copies of the file allocation table. This, of course, essentially destroyed all the data on the drive. In desperation, I sent an e-mail to their technical support people asking for help. This was a bad experience that only added insult to injury. When you go to their support page, they do everything they can, in a VERY condescending manner to discourage you from asking for help. You must first swear that you have read all their FAQ's, "knowledge base" info, etc. You are then sent to another page that says that if you INSIST on contacting a support engineer, you can "click on the link below" , but that the problem is most likely that you're too stupid to use the program correctly, or didn't follow instructions, etc. (At least that's the way it sounded to me!). So, I sent the e-mail. That was, I believe, on a Friday. It took 4 days for them to get back to me. The jist of their response to my request for help was that it was "impossible" for their program to have erased my hard drive, that I might want to take my computer somewhere and have it fixed, or maybe I could figure out how to run fdisk and check out the missing partition. After going back and forth with them and getting nowhere, I contacted a data recovery firm and was able to get back some of the lost data that had not been backed up. Then I asked them for a refund. This was even more humiliating. They did everything they could to avoid refunding my money including threats of incarceration in a federal penitentiary, homosexual and physical abuse by guards and inmates, loss of my job, humiliation of my family, etc. etc. When I refused to change my mind, they finally vectored me to a page that stated that if I wanted a refund I would have to download an executable file, FROM THEM, and run it on my computer. Ostensibly the purpose of this program was to render EE useless on my computer. Their program would then provide me with a code number which proved I had deleted EE. Only after I gave them that number would they refund my money. What do you think the chances were of me running their little program after what EE had already done to my system? I called my bank had a brief and fruitful discussion about the immediate chargeback that was going to be applied to my Mastercard. This is how you deal with people like this. So, I now have a fully operational copy of Evidence Eliminator that they never got paid for. I relish in the thought that they must be really pissed about that. It's just too bad that I will never trust them or the program to ever use it. BTW, want the secret activation code for EE? .... I didn't think so. It's really too bad that this program doesn't safely and effectively do what it claims. There is a real need in our society for a program like this that WORKS! Incidentally, I have checked the drive that was corrupted for physical problems since I re-formatted it and found none. I have run several diagnostics and all pronounce it healthy. It has been performing flawlessly for several weeks now, 24 hours a day. I also considered that I might have picked up a virus, but I keep the whole Mcaffee suite up and running at all times (with current updates) and have never detected a virus (except when purposely testing Mcaffee with their virus detection test file!) I was concerned that I was crazy or made a mistake in using the software, but it seems apparent that this is a disreputable company who is preying on the paranoia of (mainly?) pedophiles and others to sell a dangerous and unreliable product. Interestingly, I noted that several "big name" internet sites have reviewed this software and had some positive things to say about it. While searching for EE info on ZDNET, I came across a review from someone who said they had experienced the IDENTICAL problem that I had. They lost a whole slew of MP3 files, etc from their hard drive after running the program and strongly advised against anyone using it. I also considered another possibility: that this firm might purposely have written software that destroys drives on which it finds jpg files with names that it deems "immoral". Wouldn't it be interesting if it turned out that for all their "disinformation" campaigning it was actually THEY who were acting in the interest of the Government selling a program to rid the world of pornography? Food for thought! I wish you luck in giving these turkeys what they deserve! Regards, Scott
So did he make a mistake running the program, or not? Does it really matter? The most important part of customer service is the word service, which does not mean "what a stallion does to a mare". By acting arrogantly and unprofessionally and accusing him of being incompetent -- which may or may not be true, but that's irrelevant, you just don't SAY that to a customer -- they took someone who could have been one of their supporters, and made him into one of their enemies. Andy and friends don't need Three Letter Agencies to have enemies, they create their own enemies through their own arrogance and lack of professionalism.
I've had some boobs send me questions over the years -- like, did I ever tell you of the school secretary who just could not get the disk to go into her floppy drive, and it turned out that the problem was that she was putting it in backwards? (Her exact words were, Oh! Nobody ever told me that the slidey window thing was supposed to go in FIRST!). Do you think I brow-beat her and accused her of being incompetent? Of course not! I spent time with her on the phone trying to figure out what her problem was, and concluded briskly but professionally when we finally figured it out. Even if I *DID* think she was a total moron (grin), I never called her such.
But then, that's the difference between a professional, and the guys who sell Evidence Eliminator.
In the meantime, Scott, please do go to the end of the main page and do look at the list of alternatives to Evidence Eliminator.