Hijacks mortgage clients and sends them to a competitor

  • The calculator itself works just fine. The problem is that when you click “Calculate”, it takes you to a rate page with a HUGE call to action that takes the user to another website to get competing rate quotes from a different company (and there is no way other than CSS or editing the code, to remove it). Ironic that the one screenshot that they don’t show you, is the one with the pop up that promotes their company. Screenshot here: https://ibb.co/i5PbFA

    Considering most people looking to download this are wanting to provide real time quotes for mortgage company websites, thats a huge conflict of interest. I get it, its a free plugin (and for them, its a great way to market the developer’s mortgage business by getting links and redirecting potential buyers away from sites who use this plugin, and over to their site). But if you are a mortgage provider and looking to use a plugin to provide real time rate quotes for YOUR clients, this is NOT the one to use if you prefer not to have your clients highjacked by a competitor.

    • This topic was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by arkventure.
    • This topic was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by Jan Dembowski. Reason: Removed competing plugin link
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    Thanks for the review but keep it about this plugin. This is not an opportunity to send users to another plugin.

    Plugin Author Mortgage Calculator

    (@rmcalculator)

    These ads have been removed long time ago.

    So the widget posts our clients form data to mlcalc servers and the output is generated from that site rather than our sites?

    And the resulting graph has a link to this page (https://www.mlcalc.com/) where our website visitors are directed to lenders who we have no idea of?

    Hmmm, I tried to edit my post to add additional information but it will not let me for some reason. This post is intended to replace the previous post.

    The widget appears to post our clients form data to mlcalc.com servers where and the output is generated into an iframe on our webpage rather than our site being responsible for the data collected and the output to the users?

    The resulting graph (the cool output) contains google analytics and has a link to this page (https://www.mlcalc.com/) where our website visitors are directed to lenders who we have no idea of?

    I guess if this were transparently disclosed as the “price” of the software being “free” I’d think differently but it seems you only figure this out if you really dig. And, there should be a way to turn this off the external links.

    According to the WP.org TOS: “The plugin must not embed external links on the public site (like a “powered by” link) without explicitly asking the user’s permission.” Maybe I missed it but I did not see either a notice or an asking of permission in the plugin documentation or interface for this.

    According to the WP.org plugin guidelines: ” plugins may not contact external servers without explicit and authorized consent… Documentation on how any user data is collected, and used, should be included in the plugin’s readme, preferably with a clearly stated privacy policy.”

    This plugin does not seem to be compliant with either of these.The resulting iFrame seems to employ google analytics and at a minimum appears to need to receive our users data to create the output. This affects our privacy policy as well as seeming to have the intent to divert users from our website to your advertisers.

    My apologies in advance if I am missing something here.
    At a minimum, I think we need to understand how our user’s data is collected and used and where permission is asked for the external public facing links and how those can be controlled.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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