The lead-in to your article makes for an ominous topic. Folks are treading on dangerous ground.

Studying the link that you furnished pours water on the fire. For "Clueful" to have any scientific or significant statistical analytic capabilities it cannot be a closely guarded proprietary application. You can make that type application do anything you want. Unless a program has an impeccable history and proven record the program's algorithms and structure needs to be made available to the public before it can mean anything. That is the way it has always done in a research project. In any statement one makes can, and will be, the individual should be ready to prove the validity of the statement - no exceptions.

"Cosoi" needs to be properly introduced. Often an individual's presence on various editorial boards and comments on his work history by recognized authorities is sufficient for a person's introduction in early "flash" reports. Think of early reports having the same status as alpha or early beta testing in comparison with software programs. All that I can say at present is " I do not know no Cosoi (grammar is intentional)

Please understand I am not criticizing your topic or the report you are presenting on the subject in your above comment.

Those in the scientific community find numerous faults in the background material presented in the article at the end of the link you included in your comment. I imagine that I and some of my rabid colleagues at the Lab (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) would take enough interest in this topic to perform a quick proper scientific analysis of the material. Early editions of a person's paper can be judged credible or not in a very short time. I think that is what you are looking for is not it? Is the material credible? I can make no comment on that fact with the scant information given. If material publicized is not credible then than the author and institution involved in publicizing a study is open to major lawsuits. Perhaps it is the fear of lawsuits that kept "Cosoi" from mentioning any big-name companies in his report.

The theme of your comment could be a wake-up call not only for mobile users but desktop uses as well. You mentioned "Google". This company has presence on desktop and mobile devices but probably its influence on desktop devices exceeds its reach when used on mobile devices. Another area of question.

I hope that I:
1. Have not offended you. Certainly that is not my intent. I can only comment on the scientific validity of some of the material that I came across as a result of studying your comment.
2. I am offering (without checking with some of my colleagues) a mathematical critique on the article that you quote.
3. I have great interest in the topic that you have presented and would like to know more of what you found in your research.
4. Unfortunately I doubt that anyone at the Lab (including myself) have ever heard of the companies being accused of malfeasance. The few number of companies mentioned certainly does not add up to the staggering statistics quoted in your referenced article. If 28,000 applications were analyzed and the malware that they contained is reflected in the report given by "Cosoi" I would think that the most prominent companies would be placed at the top of the list.
5. I am assuming that you are ringing a fire alarm to bring interest, using learned materials and people, to study what could be an alarming trend in the marketing of applications for mobile devices. I am using the word "assuming" because I do not know your history in bringing applications running in a stealth mode to the open public. Once again I would be interested in having more information on the research that you have done on the topic of studying free applications that are being accused of selling important personal information to third parties.

Anything that I have mentioned above remains nothing more than a personal comment until a peer review committee or other competent investigative committee rules on the various topics involved. Thank you for bringing this interesting topic to light.

High powered transmitting equipment that I am using tonight, and will be using on Sunday as part of a research project, is playing havoc with my dictation program. As an explanation of errors you might find my final comment helpful in understanding errors in my comment. Perhaps the humor in the little ditty is too dry. But, this is not a formal forum.

[quote]

Due to a disability, it is necessary for me to dictate most of the things that I write. Unfortunately it is common for the dictation program that I use to continue to edit a document after I have finished typing and proofreading it.

Too often when I discover Dragon's interpretation of what it thinks that I said, or it thinks what it said is what I should have said, I will give it its own head rather than change what it has written, because what it is saying is better than what I said.

http://www.itproportal.com/2013/07/09/free-apps-dubbed-the-modern-equivalent-of-spyware/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+itproportal%2Frss+%28Latest+ITProPortal+News%29

"Internet security firm Bitdefender has warned that the advertising framework used by free mobile apps is turning the software into the "modern equivalent of spyware" that can monitor users throughout the day.

The company made the conclusion after analysing the most intrusive behaviours app developers can include in products, such as location tracking, reading contact lists and leaking email addresses, phone numbers and device IDs.

'Clueful', a privacy monitoring app created by the company, was used to look into the behaviour of 314,474 free Android apps and 207,843 free iOS apps over the past year.

The research revealed there is little between the two systems when it comes to privacy, concluding that "applications are equally invasive and curious on iOS as on Android.""

Please read my advice on your first post: Failed to Connect

graylox

Looks like I commented on this a few years ago. ... My computer crashed in Feb last year and I lost EVERY one of my giveaways - games and other programs.

My problem started with leaving Netzero and getting a wireless DSL.

But after achieving success for a while, I was back struggling to activate again. I finally gave up.

Today, I decided to tackle it again.

I've not downloaded anything in over 18 months form GGOTD or GOTD.

I've been using FreeDownload Manager for over 3 years, and until we left netzero, never had a problem connecting or activating the giveaways. Downloaded the program using Chrome and then IE without success.

Followed all of the advice that I found ... finally reset the IE to autodetect settings ... but still nothing was working.

So I downloaded the program a third time without using FDM - just using the built in IE downloader .... and it worked.

Kind of shocked.

Not a problem, GMON.....with all of the forums, topics, and discussions, it can make anyone's eyes dizzy - you're in good company, for sure.

Best,
Happy

It finally worked for me last night just in time to grab the Paragon GOTD, yaay!! :D
I didn't see this thread or I wouldn't have started a new one, guess I need to get bigger eyes.

Yeah, it's working for me too. Pity I've missed the last weeks giveaways. I missed Driver Magician last time as well, so was a little disappointed at not getting that one. Still, if i really wanted it I should purchase it; but I prefer to buy games, lol.

Thanks for the heads up on the fix Happy. I ouldn't have bothered with todays if I hadn't read your post.

Hi again everyone, the 502 problem appears to have been fixed (yippeee!)
I clicked on the "download link" and everything popped up like a charm.
I feel like celebrating by doing cartwheels, backflips, and somersaults.
You see, simple things in life make me Happy (get it?) Happy...as in Happy Person :)

Best,
Happy

I had received the 502 Error code also. After looking through the forum for an answer, I tried some troubleshooting of my own. I went through my "cookies" list on my browser (Google Chrome)and deleted the ones for Giveawayoftheday. Knowing they regenerate themselves when you log on again. Use the 'Options' command to find the right section in your settings.

I restarted my browser, went to the giveaway for the day and it worked. Not sure what changed from before, but now I can download giveaways again. Hope this helps!

Thank you all for posting this Error 502.
I have had the Error for the past 2 weeks
I can not download or add a comment about the software.
I thought I was the only one who had this problem.
I posted my concern a long time ago and never got an answer form the staff about it.
I don't know whats going on with the team at GAOTD but a lot more users have this problems than they think. Plus they have to know about it. I'm sure they have computers at their homes, like us.
Why they are not addressing it. ( who knows why, but it's not good. Maybe they have a new secret 007 virus on their server or something).

Meanwhile we have 3 threads to this topic.

These two are closed:

Am I the only one still getting bad gateway and try again later?
Error 502 Bad Gateway

I've not been able to access any giveaways for two days now. Initially it was intermittent, but now everytime I try to download from the promary or mirror links I get a 502 error. anyone any idea's?

WR

Some reported changing to another country once in a while (changing flags on top of the main page.LOL) and use the download link from there helped.
I suppose there's no logic in that except of course if it's a browser's cache problem.

Thank you, Wizzard and Graylox, these links are very helpful.

Best,
Happy

or just send a PM to : "admin" : http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/profile/1

You can find that page here happy:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/about/contact/

Hi Wizzard,

How do we e-mail the company? I don't see any contact information posted.

Thanks,
Happy

Me too - no problems :)

Happy, I think what Bubby was saying is that while the company should be aware that as many people as possible are having this problem, they should be e-mailing the company instead of flooding the forums with their "me too" posts. I also think he's eluding to the fact that "me too" posts add nothing to the discussion. I guess it's kind of like those comments you see on the giveaway page where they add nothing to the discussion except "I can't get this to activate either." It's annoying and frustrating. I myself deleted two separately started threads yesterday that people felt they needed to open a new one just to say "me too." By now, I'm sure that GOTD is aware of the problem and are working on fixing it.

By the way I can't add to the discussion as I've not had any problems downloading.

Notblocklox,

We are all members of GOTD, correct? Very plain and simple. Free membership is still membership - so what I am saying is that if these technical glitches do not get resolved soon, many members may no longer wish to visit the GOTD site.

Also, given that the GOTD team has not posted this problem in its "blog" section, this is what made me say that I hope GOTD managers take our comments to heart. All other past glitches (I believe)were posted in GOTD's blog section, so why not this one?

Bubby, as one of the GOTD administrators of this forum, you should be encouraging GOTD members to report their "error/glitch/inaccessiblity findings," instead of discouraging folks to do so. For, the more people who report these prevalent/pervasive glitch issues, this will be helpful to the GOTD team, and to other members also.

Moreover,the problem is not intermittent - it is constant and it is happening on a daily basis-and this is why I don't understand why GOTD does not post this on its blog.

Also, the problem appears to occur only on the U.S.-English site. Why?

In summary - I believe GOTD will benefit by hearing from as many users as possible.

That's just my two-cents-worth on the subject.

Best,
Happy

I'm yet to have any 502 errors, and I understand how frustrating it must be for those who do get them.

The problem does seem to be intermittent - and I am quite sure that the GOTD team know about the errors. Future 'me too' posts that bring us no closer to a solution really doesn't help anyone (except perhaps the individual who just wants to 'let us know').

But we do.

Thanks Robert, I'm not really worried about the 502 thingie and even less about the output of the error console. At this moment the console is showing tens of "errors" or warnings about several sites though I never had any problems surfing.
I had to post that "warning" because I thought it was curious in its nerd language - just wanted to entertain :)

Come on Happy be happy! (sorry, couldn't resist)
Do you think the "GOTD managers" wouldn't care? The project is their business, they are doing this for money and that is the best impetus to doing things as good as they can.
BTW which membership are you speaking about? Did I miss something?

It seems to happen frequently to me these few days. Most of the time the pages don't load completely, or else it's a 502. Chances are either the Giveaway IT people are doing something with the site, or else their upgrade had a few bugs. My biggest concern is nginx. I'm not quite sure what it's used for, but it's some sort of proxy. Maybe GOTD's servers aren't running on the standard http 80 port and uses nginx on an appliance or something for redirection.

I get the same error 502 no mater if I use FF or IE, I also tried from 10 different computers at work and all the same error. I also tried at my house same error. I did like the downloads but I am missing them now. Even hard to post comment becasue same error..........hope it get fixed......

Cluelesslox
Your error might be related to the use of the FF add-on Adblock Plus(or another ad blocker).

Error 502 could be an overload/failure problem of the Gotd server but it might help clearing your browser cache completely.
(In FF3.5 go to Tools-options-advanced-network-offline storage)

I found this in the error console :

Warnung: getBoxObjectFor() sollte nicht mehr verwendet werden, versuchen Sie element.getBoundingClientRect() zu verwenden, wenn möglich.
Quelldatei: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/wondershare-mp4-video-converter/
Zeile: 0

Well, I confess, no matter which language - I have no clue :P

cluelesslox

Ok when I use Firefox I get same 502 error but when i look at the error console I see this

Security Error: Content at http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/ may not load data from http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/wondershare-mp4-video-converter/.

Given that this problem is occuring for many people, this clearly is a GOTD server issue, especially since we were all able to easily and smoothly access/download/post on GOTD before. I hope GOTD managers take our comments to heart and try to fix the problem soon. Otherwise, GOTD may see declining membership due to these technical "glitches."

Best,
Happy

I'm sorry to hear that many users have the 502 problems; and I'm sorry that I can't help you.
Maybe it's a regional problem? I am able to download with Firefox and IE, with and without a downloader, from the main source and from the mirror.
I have tried it several times from the English site and the German.
But I too get the Bad Gateway sometimes when I will give a + or - or a thumbs up. After F5 / refresh it seems that my click was counted.

The test-comment I wrote got the error message too, but after F5/refresh it appeared as usual under the comments.
graylox