9/4/2009 - This article is written in response to an article published by TwoCan.com on August 18, 2009 that can be
found here. The article contained a combination
of hypocritical criticism, false advertising, and technological ignorance. TwoCan.com was hypocritical by criticizing
the earning of advertising revenue by STD Carriers due to the fact that they advertised
on STD Carrier regularly during June and July of 2009. They presented false advertising
by saying that their service can protect people from being listed on STD Carriers.
They also demonstrated technological ignorance by failing to understand how automated
information systems work in regards to the STD Carriers data collection methods.
The following will analyze the hypocrisy, poor data security, and poor technical
knowledge demonstrated in their article along with the price of their service and
lack of members.
Hypocritical Criticism
TwoCan.com
condemned the STDCarriers.com service suggesting that people publishing information
are not required to identify themselves as a way of increasing traffic to earn more
advertising dollars. This is not the case. Members are required to provide a valid
email address so they can be contacted about any questions regarding the information
they publish. It does not require additional personal contact information to protect
their privacy and safety since in some areas it not legal to make a report and in
those cases the Free Speech Privacy Policy
is applied to give people the same rights as Americans no matter where they are.
TwoCan.com
also has no right to criticize advertising dollars generated from the promotion
of their service on STD Carriers since they paid STD Carriers a fee whenever someone
clicked on one of their banners. The STD Carriers service remained the same from
when they first started advertising here to when they quit. If they have a problem
with the service they should not have used it to promote their product in the first
place. Let this be a warning to anyone considering allowing TwoCan.com to promote themselves on their
site. They may put money in your hand one day and stab you in the back a few weeks
later.
False Advertising
TwoCan.com
claimed to provide a confidential dating service that can protect people from being
reported to STD Carriers. To see if this was true we infiltrated TwoCan.com and were able to contact 100 of
its members. We were able to sign up for the free 3 day membership simply by creating
a free email account called twocansucks@yahoo.com and would have easily been able
to become full members if the service were worth the $15.00 a month fee. The pictures
available in the AJAX Accordion below provide proof of the
infiltration. Exhibit 1 shows the first picture added to our TwoCan.com profile and exhibit 2 displaying
part of the physical description related to our profile. In exhibit 3 you can see
how we populated the profile with a variety of original STDCarriers.com logos. Exhibit
4 shows a video that we were able to upload to the profile. The video chosen was
a copy of "
STDCarriers.com Responds to Misleading News Report". Exhibit 5 shows us
conducting a search of their member profiles where you can see the "cheesy" avatars
that are used by its members. Exhibit 6 shows that the service only has 1,677 members
in the United States. We also learned that most members that exist in a single state
is in the neighborhood of 200 which is hardy a thriving user community. Exhibit
7 shows us initiating a relationship with a member of TwoCan.com. A process we were able to do
100 times and probably would have been able to do 1,677 times is we desired. We
never pursued infiltration further for a couple of reasons. The first being that
STD Carriers does not report information obtained from online dating profiles and
second we have no plans on doing so. STD Carriers promotes disclosure before exposure
and is primarily concerned with identifying people who are dishonest with their
sexual partners. STD dating sites provide a great place for people with STDs to
find love without the fear of rejection and because of this we have no interest
in researching members of any STD dating site and never will. It should be noted
that there is little preventing others from positing information obtained form TwoCan.com
or other STD dating sites on STD Carriers without STD Carriers being involved in
any way.
Technological Ignorance
TwoCan.com
made statements about information on STD Carriers that they believed to be false
and could not think of any reason why the information would not be removed. This
indicates that they suffer form both a lack of understanding of how STD Carriers
and automated information systems work. STD Carriers is an automated user driven online database that receives information
through an online form where a user enters data and clicks a button to insert it
into the database. The web form for browsing the list of STD Carriers is programmed
to display all records not marked for deletion by the site administration or marked
as inactive by the member who created the profile as specified by search criteria
in reverse chronological order. This enables STD Carriers to display the information
it receives instantly without human interference. Users can click on a link button
to view the record in detail on a new dynamic form. The new dynamic form selects a single record for
which a match exists between the unique identifying number passed from the previous
form as a
query string in the uniform resource locator (URL) where the record exists,
has not been marked for deletion by the site administration, and has not been marked
as inactive by the member who created it. In order for a record to be reviewed someone
must inform the site administration of a record they believe to be inaccurate at
which point the record will be reviewed at the earliest possible convenience of
the STD Carriers administration. It is a simple process that even Jessica Simpson could understand. To spell
out how data that appears to be unbelievable can end up on the list you need to
see it from the perspective of a computer. Computers see everything as a series
of the numbers 0 and 1. This is known as binary code. Software like the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database
that powers STD Carriers is programmed to the make best use of information the best
it can, but is not capable of human thought. This can result in phrases like "lie"
and "truth" being recorded and displayed in the same way since to the computer the
word "lie" only means that there is a letter "l" followed by an "i" and an "e".
For a visual example compare the images in the AJAX Accordion control below. Exhibit 1 displays
an image the way a human being sees an image. The image appears to be
David Hasselhoff posing in the nude with puppies covering his genitals with
a joke being made in reference to him having Genital Herpes. Exhibit 2 shows the
same image as a computer would see it as a series of binary code which is how the
computer will see all images no matter how they appear to people.
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2. Binary Code
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Conclusion
TwoCan.com's
hypocritical criticism of methods used to promote their product, promotion of an
over priced service with a small amount of users whose privacy they cannot protect,
and their lack of technical understanding should be a red flag. We conclude that
TwoCan.com
is not a trustworthy website to provide advertising for, an ineffective provider
of confidential dating for people with STDs, and lacks the technical knowledge to
understand the basic principals of how automated information systems work. We recommend
that other websites not allow TwoCan.com to place banners on their sites, that people
with STDs looking for a confidential dating service look elsewhere, and that the
author of the TwoCan.com article take a computer science class or two.