Would you trust www.ronpaultoolbar.com

Would you trust www.ronpaultoolbar.com?

  • Yes

    Votes: 52 34.0%

  • No

    Votes: 101 66.0%
  • Total voters
    153
I don't mean to offend or down-play anyone's support, and my apologies to the developer who supposedly posted in this thread. But sorry, simply SAYING a binary file is okay because "it is safe," "seems okay," "scans fine," or "it's certified" does not prove a thing. I've seen too many examples of toolbar applications that claim to be safe and are eventually discovered to not be -- usually because I'm the one fixing it for a panicked friend who installed something that was supposedly safe.

Toolbars, unfortunately, have been some of the worst offenders when it comes to malware and spyware. Until proven otherwise, you should treat them all as potential threats. And by proven, I mean:

  • Has anyone extracted the XPI source code and ran through it all with a fine tooth comb?
  • Has anyone acquired the IE toolbar source code and examined it equally as well?
  • Has anyone done a connection monitoring of the app to verify that all outbound connections from your computer are acceptable and not sending anything questionable?
  • Has anyone done a registry snapshot before and after the install/run and compared the differences?

Call me a skeptic, but I'm a programmer who's been dealing with publicly traded files for decades, and I know how easy it is to get away with some pretty nasty stuff.

Here's a simple example of what makes me nervous. It appears that the Ron Paul Toolbar is based on the Free Cause Toolbar system (I see a handful of references to it in the extracted XPI code at quick glance and the "certification" is from them). From the Free Cause FAQ page:

What is autolink?
The autolink function creates links on webpages where they otherwise do not exist, providing links to websites related to important terms within the page you are viewing.
Click to expand...

If the autolink functionality is present in the RPToolbar, then it is sending information about the pages you are viewing to a server somewhere so that it can create links "related to important terms within the page you are viewing." You may argue that it is anonymous data, but through simple data mining, associations eventually leading to your identity can be made easily.

Your definition may be different, but that sure does fit within my personal definition of spyware.


Edit: And as MysticGeek just pointed out before me, there are some other potentially scary features of this toolbar (gathering usage stats for example) that you must turn off during install.
 
Thanks for the techie explanation Thanehand. About 50% of it made sense to me ;)

But seriously, that was helpful.
 
Hi Chris,

I'm a Founder of ronpaulbillboards.com, we are listed on your site and we have a few questions about your Ron Paul Toolbar website.

The people want to know. Have you paid any grassroots projects yet? If not when do you expect payments to start or update on Toolbar's ability to generate funds. I sent you a personal email to the address you provided and haven't received a reply back in over a week.

We have also recently learned we are also listed on the ronpaulrewards.com site and there are red flags and we haven't been contacted as well.

Any info publicly will alleviate concerns I'm sure.

Thanks,

Harold
 
ronpaulbillboards said:
Hi Chris,

I'm a Founder of ronpaulbillboards.com, we are listed on your site and we have a few questions about your Ron Paul Toolbar website.

The people want to know. Have you paid any grassroots projects yet? If not when do you expect payments to start or update on Toolbar's ability to generate funds. I sent you a personal email to the address you provided and haven't received a reply back in over a week.

We have also recently learned we are also listed on the ronpaulrewards.com site and there are red flags and we haven't been contacted as well.

Any info publicly will alleviate concerns I'm sure.

Thanks,

Harold
Click to expand...

Perfect. Thank you Harold, both for ronpaulbillboards.com and for asking the question.

I've contacted them several times and never heard back either, so I call 'foul' on this one.
 
We just launched the website at the beginning of January so no, nothing has been donated yet.

We donate monthly after the monthly vote has been tallied and divy 50% of the funds raised according by popular vote.

Then we contact the top 10 members who referred the most traffic and ask them where they prefer the money to go, each of the top 10 will have a say in where the other 50% go.

So sorry we haven't given you proof of donation yet, but because the first month hasn't even gone by, we haven't donated anything yet.

Chris Lawton has come on here numerous times to give his phone number, if anyone has any questions, just give him a call to alleviate your concerns.
 
:confused:

We don't collect any personal information about you.

The only information that is collected is:

1) the sponsored links you click on
2) the ip address that the click came from

this is so that Yahoo can know how much to pay, and to make sure the clicks are fraudulent.

so again, I understand you being concerned, but we've explained it pretty well and given lots of opportunity to personally chat with us about it.

Please refrain from making accusations that we are 'data mining' and installing malware or spyware.

Thanehand - I'm glad you know how to look for suspicious activity - don't you think we've tested and made sure that our toolbar is safe? If you don't believe us then just test it yourself instead of scaring people and smearing our name and our efforts.

I'm pretty disappointed right now that a lot of people think we're installing spyware on their computers because of a select few who keep saying that we're doing something fishy.

We've given you our personal phone numbers to call us and chat about this - we've tried to give you as much information as possible, there's nothing else we can do.

Either you chose to trust us, or you chose not to trust us.

It feels like some of you have obviously made up your minds that the toolbar is not safe and just refuse to accept that it is one of the most powerful tools to fund the revolution out there.

For those who are still open-minded to the toolbar but have questions, 864-325-6400 is Chris's phone number. If you have any questions, call Chris Lawton - thats his cell phone and he's happy to talk to anyone!

For those who are supporting the toolbar, thank you so very much! We're doing awesome, downloads are growing every day and we'll be soon making our first donations (the end of the month). Keep telling everyone you know about the toolbar and help us get 100,000 Ron Paul Supporters to install this toolbar FREE on their computers so we can donate $300,000 per month!

P.S.

This is why I hate post counts...maybe Chris only has 8 posts on here because he's spent every spare minute of the last 6 months of his life dedicated to getting Ron Paul elected elsewhere, Chris has over 6000 posts on his meetup group.

Please people, enough with the accusations, you're only hurting the grassroots - this is a brilliant idea, and it should be embraced.
 
Call ME - Chris Lawton (my story is on the front page of the Ron Paul Tool Bar . Com) ANYTIME! - 864-325-6400 9-9 EST
 
Chris rocks!

I just had a great conversation with him a few days ago.

He eased my concerns and answered all questions. If anyone has any questions I recommend calling him from 9am to 9pm.

Download and search with the Ron Paul Toolbar and you can help fund grassroots projects for Ron Paul.

Harold
 
Thanx Everyone! Make sure everyone votes before the end of the month we over the $1000 mark in just the pre-launch!!! We will pay the TOP 3 vote getters during this pre-launch! Everyone download your tool bar - surf every day! We'll reset the counters on the 1st!! Get you own referral link/banner and SPREAD THE WORD! Folks, this is FREE MONEY!!!

Chris
864-325-6400
9-9 EST
 
Cool...I hadn't noticed these questions over the integrity of the toolbar, but I'm glad they were put to rest by the time I finished the thread. I just downloaded the Ron Paul Toolbar. :D
 
The RonPaul ToolBar is a virus, according to my Kaspersky antivirus and a person on ronpaulforum.com
It steals credit card details.

Ross
 
Last edited:
It's fine. I've tested it with numerous programs plus looked at the code. I would go in to detail but this whole thing is getting old. Do a search and read the threads about this. Educate yourselves. This is a great tool for Ron Paul!
 
I had it, and I liked it-- all the important sites were right the. The only thing I didn't like about it was that you couldn't clear the search history. I ended up removing it but only b/c my puter is a dinosaur.
 
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