Friday, November 23, 2007

C|NET - Download.com -- Are you confused?


This is what happens when I (successfully?) log in to Download.com.

As you can see, I'm logged in and it displayed my user name
(Welcome back, "trdaggett"). And if you look at the bottom it also says "Sorry, the identifier/password combination you've entered is invalid.".

I just sent another issue 'comment' to CNET about the ongoing login issues. I've been registered with CNET and ZDNet for years, and it seems like nearly every time I go to log in something like this happens. They don't screw up my email
address though, I get everything I've signed up for.


After I finished sending the support comment, it presented me with a page that went something like this; 'We think you requested information on Limewire...'.
I wish I'd taken a screenshot of it. It obviously parsed my comment and made a guess as to the content....badly. Nowhere did I mention Limewire or anything remotely similar.

In the second screen grab you see it shows all the different requests that "NoScript" detected.
For those who don't know about it NoScript is a Firefox 'extension' that blocks Java scripting in web pages until I 'allow' it. It's perhaps the most valuable add-on available and protects me from malicious scripting exploits.
Everyone should use it unless you're a security freak and are using another method.
The author Giorgio Maone is to be congratulated and deserves all the donations we can send!
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Now back to CNET, I don't know what causes this/these issues, I'm thinking that it might have something to do with all the different scripts running on their pages, and all the different browsers and combinations of security ware and add-ons people use. But it's not like I'm using an obscure browser or shouldn't be using an excellent security extension like NoScript.
Obviously something is screwed up, and usually the more things you have going on inside a web page, the better the chance for conflicts.
As an end-user, I don't care.
All I want is a web page that works. And guess what happens if an end-user has trouble every time they try to log in? -- Adios until you get it straight.

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