Location Determination Beta

Posts: 318 · Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 9:41 am Post subject: Location Determination Beta

Has anyone else been approached by Vonage to participate in their location determination beta program? They asked me to download, install, and then remove an IE toolbar by Loki called Skyhook that supposedly is supposed to help determine your geographical location.

I installed this tool and it totally wiped out my network connections. I removed the tool and it hasn't helped.

I have no idea how I going to fix this. Just wanted to warn everyone here: This software is not only unstable, it's damaging.

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 10:39 am Post subject:

How did they approach you, and are you 100% certain it was Vonage that approached you?

That sounds like a standard ploy from a spyware "vendor" trying to get their adware or spyware installed on your machine.

Posts: 533 · Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 10:55 am Post subject:

I'm not sure why Vonage would want you to participate in Loki's Skyhook beta. Anyway, from the research I've done, Skyhook is not spyware, but that doesn't mean it's not going to screw up your computer!

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 11:00 am Post subject:

EzCo wrote:

Anyway, from the research I've done, Skyhook is not spyware,

I concur. However, if this was a phishing attempt, the spyware author might have invoked both Vonage's and Loki's name to fool the user into thinking they were loading legitimate software for a legitimate test.

Unlikely, I know, but in this day and age.... Sad

Posts: 142 · Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 11:08 am Post subject:

You might want to do a search in here:
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=Vonage+Skyhook&mkt=en-US&form=QBRE

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 15, 2004 Posts: 7

I received the email, but haven't done anything about it yet. I was also concerned about spyware, which is why I haven't tried it yet. Has anyone else installed the software?

Posts: 400 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: May 05, 2005 Posts: 400

This maybe a legit attempt by Vonage to improve or implement a failover system by moving your service automatically to another server if the one you're on goes down. Like my Voip provider does.

Posts: 318 · Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 4:54 pm Post subject:

The Skyhook thing is all about E-911 and, specifically, providing E-911 no matter where you are...at least, that is the way it sounded.

And it is a real Vonage beta program. The guy I spoke with on the phone said he had done it and "nothing happened to my computer"...so I was just imagining my problem, apparently.

Since it's a corporate laptop, I suppose I have to work with corporate IT tomorrow. It will result in a lot of lost work...

Posts: 61 · Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 5:52 pm Post subject:

I received the email last week asking if I would be willing to test and I agreed to. Today I received an email with the links to install the test software. I follows the instructions and ran the test successfully. I then un-installed the test software and have experienced NO problems. Actually it was pretty neat. They pinpointed my location (I could see a map).

Posts: 318 · Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 6:26 pm Post subject:

pitroad wrote:

I received the email last week asking if I would be willing to test and I agreed to. Today I received an email with the links to install the test software. I follows the instructions and ran the test successfully. I then un-installed the test software and have experienced NO problems. Actually it was pretty neat. They pinpointed my location (I could see a map).

During my install, my screen went totally black. I let it sit for about 30 minutes, but gave up and forced the computer into sleep (didn't turn it off, it went to sleep when I hit the power button).

At the same time the screen went black, I lost network connections. I was running the install over my local area network using Remote Desktop...

After I woke the computer up, everything seemed to be okay...but no network connections. So I removed the program, restarted...still no connections.

So it was a failure for me. And I figure during install it tried messing with my registry and, for some reason, something got messed up...

I assume IT will probably eventually try to re-image the computer. Since they are remote, they'll probably have to send me a disk or something so I can do it locally...

What a pain in the ass. Hence my "days" of downtime.