October 2003 Archives
There are 5 new 5pt sample surveys at MyPoints (in Simple Points). Give the "right answers" and you get the points. Not suggesting you be untruthful :) but these are the answers I gave to get the points: For Heartburn survey, chose 2x week & Gaviscon. For Fiber survey, chose 3 or more times & Metamucil. For Fabric care, chose I use a liquid and dryer sheet equally. For Kitten care, chose 6 months, Science Diet, Science Diet, for kittens. For Menopause, chose all boxes (except none of the above).
CreationsRewards (my review is here) has a few instant point opportunities up with the promise of more to come. Only catch is, these are signups for newsletters and probably spam, and CR will send them the email address you have on file at CR. Make sure your CR is a spam address before you do these signups!
This is a little off-topic, but...My laptop completely died on me, and of course, it's out of warranty. New laptops are much cheaper these days, but still around $900 for one with the specs I'd want. I was THISCLOSE to sucking it up and ordering a new computer, when I remembered hearing someone say that purchases on a platinum credit card were eligible for extended warranty coverage. I checked up on it and sure enough...my computer's warranty was 1 year, but since I bought it on a platinum card, it's covered for TWO! So now my computer either gets fixed free, or if the estimate is 70% or more of the original purchase price, I get a new one. Whoo-hoo! Just thought I'd mention this and suggest that you make all your major electronics purchases with a platinum card!
Update, 4/04: I see I'm getting TONS of hits from folks infected with the AIFIND browser hijacker and searching for a way to ditch it. Go NOW to http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html -- scan down the page to the Unable to Download section, and download CWShredder. This is what we used to make aifind / coolwebsearch go away.
I've still got a nasty virus and I can't do anything on my computer until it's fixed -- I'm using my mom's machine now.
AVOID AT ALL COSTS a search engine called AIFIND.COM -- two of their affiliates are spreading a browser hijacker that, no matter what url you type in, sends you to their AIFIND affiliate portal at XWEBSEARCH.BIZ -- the name of the portal is Cool Web Search.
The company that owns AIFIND.COM is in Scottsdale, AZ. They refused to answer any questions, so I referred the issue to the Scottsdale Police Dept., who sent me to the FBI. I filed a complaint with the Internet Fraud Complaint Center and they are supposed to be contacting the local FBI office in Arizona.
The bad guys who run this portal, though, are most likely not Americans. XWEBSEARCH.BIZ is registered in Estonia (where IS that, anyway?). But the fact is, AIFIND.COM is a US company, and they're going to have to cooperate with law enforcement to cut off the accounts of these two affiliates.
The web browser hijacker is new, it's insidious, and it can't be weeded out easily. A site called http://www.spywareinfo.com has some info on it (they call it the Cool Web Search Chronicles) -- the program (virus, trojan, whatever ya call it) has been mutating and spreading since I think April. The form I have is a new mutation (hey, lucky me!).
If you have the virus, you probably aren't reading this. You can't GET to any other website when your browser keeps friggin' redirecting to these assholes. We've tried every program we can think of to get rid of it, and it won't go away. I have no suggestions for you whatsoever if you have it.
If you DO start getting redirected to Cool Web Search and you're not using a web-based email, please mail me here at comparerewards@yahoo.com and let me know. Maybe by pooling info we can figure out how this thing got onto our computers.
Take care and hope to talk to you again in the next few days.
Becky
My husband found a bunch of bad stuff on our computer last night. I had been noticing strange things, lockups in YahooMail, porn popups on sites where they shouldn't have been, and a gray box that kept coming up saying it was going to create my account in 30 seconds (which I'd shut down from my Task Manager within the 30 seconds and it said it was a XXX program).
I had been shutting down ZoneAlarm to access the blog program I use to update CompareRewards, and apparently that's how these programs got in. The keylogger is especially bad because it records every keystroke and reports them back to...SOMEONE. I can't tell ya how many programs I've logged into just in the last three days, entering my login info, and I even made a couple of credit card purchases.
I'm mentioning this because it's possible I got all these cooties from a site we may have in common -- maybe a paid mail I read, maybe a search engine result...who knows. But it's probably a good idea to do a virus scan on your machine. I can give you some file names to look for, but you can't delete just these files, use a virus scanner! Two file names were cmd32.exe and svcinit.exe. Also, a legit program called WinGuardian was modified (to do something malicious) and installed from whoever had remote access to my machine. And I had something called the Tanked worm, that is installed into a Kazaa directory, if you use that service -- I don't use that service but my hubby had installed it a long time ago and forgotten about it.
Please note that I will NEVER send you an attachment in email; if you get one attached to a mail from me, DO NOT OPEN IT and PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I don't think this is how I got infected but it's just a good rule of thumb.
We recommend you install and use the following free programs:
Spybot Search & Destroy: http://download.com.com/3000-2144-10194058.html?tag=lst-0-1
AdAware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/
Now Freeride has a cute little shopping interface when you visit the site. The Grabacabs aren't coming up, and the 3pt Grabacab icon (you know, "look for this!") on the side of the page has been changed to a 1pt icon. You do get one point the first time you visit a site, but Bonnie from Clicktothemagic says this places a cookie on your computer that may interfere with you getting rewarded from any other reward program for shopping at that merchant.
(sigh) Anybody can put up a shopping site. I had expected a little more from Freeride. Why should we shop from them instead of, say, Netflip or Ebates or one of 50 other programs? Because of their cute little avatars? Yeeeeeah. No, I don't think so.
If you are "lucky enough" to be in Memogold (see my previous post about THAT hullabaloo), you'll find under the Fun Stuff section of the site an option for Lightning Fast Trivia. 10 questions are pulled at random and you're given 10 seconds to answer each.
BigBigForums has a post up where folks are posting the questions they were asked and the correct answers -- in case you get those questions in the future. Definitely worth bookmarking and re-reading from time to time!
I was chatting with the owner of QuickRewards this morning, and he mentioned a way to earn an extra 3c a day there that I wasn't aware of! It's under Earn Cash and is called SUPERFREEBIES, and there's a different email newsletter you can sign up there every day for 3c. Make sure to use a spam email address -- you can get one at http://www.mail.com -- and you'll need to send a copy of your email confirmation to get the credit. An easy 3c a day!
P.S. He also said that QuickRewards will be sending paid email soon...AND in the near future, QR will pick 100 trivia answer winners daily! Whoo-hoo!
Not a member of QR? Now's a good time to join!
Want those trivia answers emailed to you daily? Email me with subject "Trivia" and I'll sign ya up!
In an email to its current members yesterday, Freeride promises more ways to earn coming soon, including new stores, new offers, and daily email.
Hope so. At the current rate of 10 free (nonspending) points a day, it'd take 2.9 years to cash out for their cheapest redemption.
In case you got a "this page is parked at GoDaddy" message -- Bonnie from ClickToTheMagic said on a deal forum that she'd had some problems with her hosting company but it's been resolved -- we may get the "parked" message for a day or two and then the site will be back up. Keep checking back!
Not a member of CTTM? Read my review here.
