Abine Reviews
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15 Reviews for Abine.com
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It seems to be doing as advertised however I get a security certificate warning that the websites certificate was issued for a different address? Any way to resolve?
Tom M
Abine is providing a tool do not track me. i installed the tool and it looks working fine. But my concern is they are tracking us by showing number of trackers stopped by Abine tool using some sort of their own tracker that is not blocked by them. They say the data they have is safe but that's what all companies say. How about when they are getting acquired by a bigger company? Data will be sold to them. Irony - Do not Track itself tracks me.
I have barely started using 2 of the Abine products, free versions. Do Not Track Me & MaskMe. I get an email request from Abine to take a survey for Abine:
http://deletemecj.surveyanalytics.com/
Help us develop our next privacy tool
Here at Abine we're hard at work developing the next big tools in online
privacy, and could use your help to make them better. We rely on user
feedback to make sure we're developing products our users will love.
If you have 1-2 minutes, please help us out by taking a quick survey.
Thanks!
So, I agreed & got into the survey. First question was which of their products I use, Second question was wanting to know if I pay for an identity theft protection. Third question is about all my insurance coverage.. health, auto, etc. & I just closed the survey window.. I don't think this was cool, at all. Why do they need to know what kind of insurance I purchase & use? I agreed to take the survey to help them better their product & they want to know my insurance usage, almost at the very beginning of the survey.
It appears that they were not trying to better their product, but sell me another product. I went back and went through the survey & it just seems like a convoluted hot mess.
I have no use for companies that aren't more honest & to the point. Just try to sell me something else. Do not mask your sales attempts! Especially when you are trying to sell me privacy software.
Also, I noticed that the MaskMe program had recorded my log in info on a couple of my accounts that I have had for years, that I had not used the MaskMe service to create. I got no permissions requester, at all, to do this. Found it odd that it only did this on a couple accounts, rather than all that I had logged into, since I started using MaskMe.
MaskMe is still in beta & only offered after I installed Do Not Track Me.
Hi there--Sarah here from Abine. Sorry to hear that you were put off by our survey. To be fair, it was voluntary: you chose to take it. We appreciate that you tried it, but you didn't *have* to take it. Second, we weren't trying to sell you anything in that survey: we were trying to gain voluntary insight from our users into what products they might want us to make in the future. That way, we're offering you something you actually want and find useful, as opposed to something you don't. Third, we have a freemium business model that's privacy-friendly and allows us to give out completely free, no-strings-attached privacy tools like DoNotTrackMe (you can read more about that business model here: http://abine.com/confidence/). The way we make money is by some of our users choosing to buy premium, paid products. It's a business model that avoids traditional advertising and tracking that you encounter almost everywhere else online. Some of our tools are free; some are paid. We choose to let our users make the decision about whether to buy something from us, rather than make money by scraping and selling their data.
Lastly, your MaskMe question: MaskMe cannot store accounts unless you log into them while using MaskMe, which is probably what happened here. The tool is designed to securely store your logins. It sounds like you're unhappy about the fact that MaskMe did what it's designed to do. If I'm missing something, though, please send your feedback to mm.beta.feedback [at] abine.com.
I downloaded this program on advice of a friend. It worked great, that is until I updated to a newer version. Then my IE8 browser would not work. It would open and then immediately close. Removed the program and have had no problems since. Would like to know what caused this so I can once again download this program.
Hi Joseph--Sarah from Abine here. We'd recommend you use both the newest version of IE and the newest version of DNTMe, and you shouldn't have any problems. You can reinstall at www.abine.com/dntdetail.php. If something still goes wrong, feel free to email me directly at Sarah [at] Abine [dot] com.
I'm taking the time to actually review them because I had a great experience with their customer service on chat. The person I spoke with was really helpful and walked me through updating an Abine add-on. That kind of patience and attitude is hard to find these days, let alone in customer service. Their software is awesome, too. Easy to use.
I have been using chrome blocker since August, 2010. I use it to block all, including the 4 trackers on the Jabber website. I assume it is working. But, I will telll you that I have never been directed to purchase anything from Abine; it just keeps working quietly in the background.
Now that I know they have something that will do the same for IE, which I have to use at work since other programs I need only tie into it, I will let you know.
I use abine to keep sites from tracking me and stealing and selling my information. Works great!
Excellent hands on customer service to help me plow through the red tape and confusion surrounding account deletions. A very committed team. Highly recommended.
The Taco 3.6 with Abine is a useful add-on, yet you almost need a PhD to understand all the terminology that goes along with it. I'm not sure it's something that I'd use on a regular basis to monitor the activity on my computer while I'm on the internet, and it almost makes me more worried with all the products out now days...is it *really* protecting me, or just another scam to get into my computer?
Found this site after a friend told me that they deleted her name and address from spokeo for free, which was cool. I had a live chat with someone from deleteme, their site that deletes accounts and pages and things, to see if they'd be able to remove my name from mylife.com. I have no idea how they had my info, but it's one of the top google results for my name. They were able to do it no problem. It's a good concept for a service and I can see a lot of people needing to use it in the future.
My gf used deleteme, owned by Abine, to get rid of an untrue review of her shop that her competitors put up and she was really happy with their service. I have more experience with the software end of Abine because i've been using chromeblock since it came out. I like that it's hands off unless i want to see which trackers i'm blocking, but it lets me do that, too. All in all, great customer service and cool software.
this is a great resource to know about - it's pretty scary knowing about all the private information floating out there.
Glad I could direct you to it. And I agree--there's way too much about all of us out there online, and it can be dangerous.
I'd hate for this to sound like overkill, but Abine really has changed the way I use the internet for the better. I haven't had a chance to explore all of the features yet, so I can't speak on the product as a whole, but I like what I've seen so far. The opt out functions and protection against tracking are more effective and easier to use than the add-ons I was using before I found Abine.
I also like being able to see all of the accounts I've signed up for (and allowed password save permission) but forgot existed. One such site had my credit card info stored on it as well. I was able to find this easily and delete the stored access info with the Abine privacy suite.
Finally, the email alias function and identity manager allows me to send inquiries and sign up for offers and accounts without having to worry about an onslaught of followups, surveys, and spam to my main email account.
I have to give a 4 out of 4. It's just too cool and too easy to use. I would definitely recommend it to all of my fellow privacy-conscious web surfers out there.
I like the look of Abine. It displays the relevant information about tracking, optout, and cookies at the lower right of the browser. However, unfortunately, it also slows down my browsing experience. I've tried a few things to deal with this, but it slows down my service, even the Fast Dial page I set up for Firefox. At the present time I cannot recommend this, but I do recommend they take some cues from the Ad Block and NoScript! add-ons for Firefox.
Hi, Sarah from Abine here. When you say you're using "Abine," do you mean DoNotTrackMe? If not, I'd recommend you try it out: it's newer, faster, and better, and most of our users tell us it speeds up their browsing experiences. You can get it for free at www.abine.com/dntdetail.php. Thanks!
After a few days it starting redirecting me to site to buy $#*!
http://www.abine.com/faq.php#q24
I use firefox..link above can help you uninstall that $#*!
goodluck
Abine PrivacySuite does not serve any advertising or redirect to any pages to buy anything. Something else must have happened -- please contact us http://www.abine.com/support.php to help resolve. Thank you.
Here's something that's going to find a home in many people's browsers, I reckon. If you are already running the Taco 3 anti-cookie add-on for Firefox you've already got this installed from the time of writing this review. If not, give it a try, I think it's a useful one.
What the add-on does is to present you with a comprehensive report of what a website is up to, behind the scenes, as soon as you arrive. For example it will tell you, if it knows, what information this site is storing about you; it will tell you what, if any, tracking services the site is using to follow you around, and it will tell you how many cookies the site has dumped on your computer already. It will also give you a rough idea of how safe the site is, if you don't want to get bogged down in the various details. The data is provided in an unusually pretty format, which will catch your eye even if the information provided doesn't.
Sitejabber just squeaks into the 'safe' portion of the chart, because it uses Google Analytics, but otherwise it seems a safe enough place to visit - so far ;-)
Another service that Abine is trying out, is called 'Delete Me' and the concept here is that for a price, depending on difficulty, they will remove details about you which you or others have unfortunately posted to various places and now wish you hadn't. The most commonly requested, unsurprisingly, is removal of a Facebook or MySpace account, but the company promises to tackle much more complicated and/or secure data for an appropriate fee. As long as they keep these fees reasonable, I can see this being a popular service once the word gets around.
The Abine services are currently in beta, which means that they should be reasonably stable for most users but may throw a bug now and again, or simply that the provided data and the overall presentation hasn't been formalized yet. The browser add-on seems rock solid to me, so I see no reason NOT to give it a try. What websites are doing with whatever data they can grab is important and you should be informed, even if you don't necessarily choose to do anything drastic with that information.
I'd like to see this combined with user-created information such as that provided by the Web Of Trust service; it's not essential, since if you want that data then you will probably have joined WOT anyway. But it would be neat to have the WOT rating there, as an encouragement to join up as well as providing another layer of security. Other than that, I find little or nothing to fault about this one and it should do well.
Neat tool. Reminds me of an article I read today about privacy companies becoming a hot ticket: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703438604575315182025721578.html
I would absolutely buy the delete me feature but I do wonder how this works. How can they get these other websites to delete your personal information? It seems like that feature seems like it is almost too good to be true, but I hope they develop it. Maybe they are developing relationships with Facebook and other websites. Now I can finally get that photo of me doing Gawd knows what off of my exes facebook page....
In response to Tracy: I'm one of the DeleteMe experts who takes care of deletions. We have a lot of methods of getting rid of things--it's a combination of technology, experience, and stubbornness :) Simply put, we work within each company or website's privacy policies and terms of use to get information removed. We're so familiar with each site's rules that we've streamlined the process for removing info. And yes, we do have relationships with many of the sites that we delete info from often.
Sarah P, Why would I use your Deleteme service, when serveral online data information sites clearly state that a third party representation trying to remove your information will be ignored or will not delete your information? Peoplefinders.com requires the person to send in identification to be removed! I guess you are hoping that the individual will not read the terms or privacy notice on the sites?
Their terms of use may say that, but their terms can't override legal principles of agency. In other words, I can appoint you as my designated agent or representative to do certain things on my behalf. This is a recognized, time-honored, and respected legal principle, and that's what we do with DeleteMe. Think about it this way: let's say I'm paralyzed and am physically incapable of signing an opt-out letter to PeopleFinders.com. Do you really think that I'd just be out of luck because of my disability? That if I can't physically do it myself, that my info just remains on the site forever? Of course not. I can authorize a representative to act on my behalf. A site's terms of use can't trump the common law.
Sarah P, Thank you for your quick reply. You still didn't explain how your service will remove me from the peoplefinders site, with out a picture id given to them. I do understand the legal principles (qui facit per alium, facit per se). Your example of a paralyzed person (my uncle is paralyzed from the hips down) is not fair and if someone was incapable of physically signing the letter (the opt out letter for peoplefinders.com does not require a signature at all! [http://www.peoplefinders.com/optout-form.pdf}]), the person would have a guardian or court appointed guardian, whom assist them in these matters.
I am interested in your answer to the removal process that your company practices for peoplefinders. Also I was wondering if a full disclosure of all information relevant to the transactions/removal of the personal information from the sites is available? Because I believe that is your 'duty' under the law of agency.
We *do* give them a picture ID in cases where that site requires one. We remove the customer's photo and driver's license number.
Here's a public list of everything we do for each opt-out: http://abine.com/optouts.php
I should have added one other and most important thing - the add-on allows you to block any and all of the tracking services that a site is using. Sorry I missed that, it's a key function.
Also, although I did write that the add-on seemed very solid, it does have a small issue, so I found. Occasionally the pop-up panel will appear about 2 - 3 times the correct size, which is not crucial and may have something to do with the way the browser interprets the page in question. No big deal, I just wanted to report that.
Ok...I'm sold....I need to give this a try. I sometimes wish the internet didn't give away all of my privacy and maybe this will help
Just give it a while..Apine will start redirecting you to buy FREE protection,etc
It's total BS
From them:
Sorry we missed your support chat request and for any problems you experienced with the Abine beta.
This software is not spyware or adware -- it does not send any information out from your computer and it does not serve any ads. Abine, Inc. is an online privacy company.
For uninstallation instructions, please consult the FAQ on the Abine website:
http://www.abine.com/faq.php#q24
delete b4 you have worse troubles than they claim to protect you from
Tomb j., thanks for the update. I don't have this installed any more because it was causing problems with my version of Firefox. It was interesting but not so useful that I've missed it since I uninstalled it. If as you say, it starts behaving badly after a while, of course people should consider uninstalling it.
If there are other, similar reports about this product I will be happy to go back and revisit my earlier review.
I use DuckDuckGo.com insted google, I never used facebook that much to begin with, and I still don't buy anything anline (I'm serious). So I installed DoNotTrackMe, because I don't trust internet companies. So why should I trust abine.com?


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