A Second Call to ban MaxBlogPress plugins

Hello there,

MaxBlogPress requires to give your email address for obvious reason. We need to make announcement of plugins update and other development. Because bloggers sometimes need to update plugins as well when wordpress updates.

But you can unsubscribe from the subscriber list anytime from a link in email if you don’t like to receive emails from us.

And also you don’t have to enter your email address for all of the Maxblogpress’s plugins. If you have registered for one of our plugin then you can use all other plugins.

You can read about it in details from following link:
https://www.maxblogpress.com/blog/76/maxblogpress-plugins-registration/

Thanks
Deelip Khanal
MaxBlogPress.com

MaxBlogPress requires your email address for an obvious reason. That is, we may need to inform our plugin users about the plugin updates which we frequently perform as WordPress updates.

Clearly I’m missing something. Wouldn’t that be covered by having your plugin listed in the repository and keeping the SVN there up to date? Any time a plugin is updated, I get a notice in my admin side and I can update it from there. No email needed! Woo.

It would probably be better if you put a registration as something optional. “Register with us to be notified of plugin changes and other information…”

This guy is a spammer, pure and simple. I had the misfortune of giving up my email to him and got spammed to death.

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/320646?replies=4

Requiring registration after the program has been acquired is a usage restriction and violates the terms of the WordPress license in my opinion.

I would not wonder if you get spammed later on. I hope they are removed from the repository fast now so that other users are not tricked. Thanks for reporting the issue.

I wonder about people that are so concerned about giving out their email, if I go to a site and they ask for my email and I don’t want to give it, I don’t. If that means that I can’t use their product then so be it. But why complain to the world, just don’t use the product.
As far as I know no one will force you to use their product.

But why complain to the world, just don’t use the product…
….As far as I know no one will force you to use their product.

I don’t think that’s quite the circumstance or the issue in this case. I think the plugins in question are being pointed out because their (or the authors) behavior is being interpreted – by more than just one opinion, it would seem – as contradictory in relationship to the terms/rules that make a plugin acceptable for inclusion in the www.ads-software.com plugin directory.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer and other MBP plugins should be banned from the plugin repository for the following reasons:

1) MBP plugins are using the WordPress repository as an advertising vehicle and to gain legitimacy for users and search engines. Links to plugin FAQs, installation instructions, etc. point to the developer’s site instead of providing useful information on the WordPress plugin site.

2) The developer uses the repository’s reflected legitimacy to gather email addresses for the primary purpose of spamming users with internet marketing missives. I know this because I receive spam from him regularly.

3) WordPress already provides an update mechanism that does not require email registration so his assertion that he is using emails for support is a red herring (BS). Blatant BS should not be rewarded.

4) Unless www.ads-software.com and Automattic endorse his spammy emails, they should remove his plugins from the repository. Failure to do so, suggests they are endorsing his spamvertizing.

5) I suspect the developer (an internet marketer) uses registrations to keep track of user blogs and run data analytics on competing internet marketers. This means that, if you run multiple blogs, even if you give the MBP developer a throw-away email address, he can and probably does, track plugin installs by IP and/or domain name via his plugin registration callback mechanism.

So, unless you enjoy being spammed, lied to, or spied on, you should probably push to have this plugin removed from the repository.

I have to third or fourth this.

After registering my email with a MaxBlogPress plugin, I started getting a steady stream of emails from him. And they’re not just info on updates and such as he claims, but rather blatant “Get Rich With Blogs” spam. And lots of it.

It seems as though today, his plugins have been removed.

I am glad to see the plugin removed… it definitely goes against the spirit of the plugin directory. Has anybody thought about forking the code and writing a ‘sanitized’ version? It’s GPL after all.

It looks like your right about it getting removed. Is it safe to keep using it though or should I remove it?

It is safe to keep using the plugin. We aren’t talking a major issue here… it’s more philosophical than anything. Although I believe you won’t automatically get updates for the plugin now that it’s not in the directory.

If I were to keep using it, would you recommend not upgrading to newer wordpress versions?

To make sure its still compatible and all. Im kinda a new blogger.

For those of you using MaxBlogPress plugins, I have just released a plugin that will auto-activate all of them, circumventing the registration/email subscription process:

cbnet MBP Auto-Activate

It currently supports all of the MBP plugins that I was able to download from their website. Let me know if I need to add more.

Hope it’s helpful!

Also, I forked three of the MBP plugins, “sanitizing” them: Favicon, Ping Optimizer, and Multi Author Comment Notification (I don’t want to link-spam this thread, so just search for them in the repo if you want them).

@dholowiski: The MBP plugins didn’t update via the repository anyway. They use their own update routine, built into the plugin, that checks for updates at the MBP website. (By my reading of the repository guidelines, that also was a violation.)

@eric Robert: Definitely, always keep your WordPress install up-to-date – especially the “dot” releases (e.g. 2.9.1 from 2.9), as these are generally security and bugfix releases.

For the “major” releases (e.g. 2.9, 3.0), it is generally advisable to disable all plugins, perform the WordPress update, and then re-enable your plugins one-by-one, to ensure compatibility.