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Warning from the Rainmeter Team

Release announcements and important news from the developers.
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jsmorley
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Warning from the Rainmeter Team

Post by jsmorley »

Image

In general sites like DeviantART or Customize.org are a great resource for getting new skins for Rainmeter. Some of the most creative work by skin authors is distributed there, and we recommend that you browse through them looking for skins that meet your needs.

However, on both of these sites, there are from time to time a rash of Rainmeter skins posted which are copies of existing skins, and are infected with a virus or malware. Do not download any skins which have comments disabled or any “hidden” comments!

The Rainmeter team works closely with the staff on these sites, and great effort is made to ensure that all skins posted on them are safe. These are large sites with a somewhat slow turnaround time however, so please protect yourself as well. Read the comments for any skin you are considering downloading and installing. Again, if comments are “hidden” or “disabled”, be aware, this is suspect. Do not download that skin. In addition, Rainmeter skins are never distributed as an executable like "install.exe". They are .rmskin (Rainmeter skin format) or .zip/.rar archive files. Do not run any executable claiming to install the skin.

The Rainmeter Team
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karmat
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Re: Warning from the Rainmeter Team

Post by karmat »

That looks excellent, Jeff. How did you say you would post it?

It might be a good idea to include examples of the files that they might come across. ie. installer.exe

I'm still doing up the description, but here's what my screenshot looks like that I'm going to upload to the Rainmeter gallery instead of the Screenshot gallery by including a file. I think that will work, not sure because I've only ever uploaded screenshots.

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jsmorley
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Re: Warning from the Rainmeter Team

Post by jsmorley »

http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/skins/sysmonitor/rainmeter/?order=5


I'm all for spamming about this situation anywhere we can...
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karmat
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Re: Warning from the Rainmeter Team

Post by karmat »

Here's mine http://karmat111.deviantart.com/art/WARNING-INFECTED-SKINS-204685590

I'm going to submit it to a bunch of groups now so it will get around more.
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karmat
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Re: Warning from the Rainmeter Team

Post by karmat »

Jeff, our two 'screenshots' were viewed by almost 1,000 people, and finally we see some action from dA staff http://rainmeter.deviantart.com/blog/39815806/

and a comment on our blog from $chix0r (staff) 2 hours ago...

Hi,
I apologise for this situation reaching the level that it has for you. Obviously we're eager to remove all the files that are warez/malware.

I'm going to go through the listing that was passed to me from one of the rainmeter groups and remove the associated files, and ban any accounts that have uploaded warez/malware. I'm also going to make sure that we amend the reporting system to give a specific flag for such things so that we can monitor the level of malware reporting easier. We recently added a specific tag for warez, so it should improve over the next few weeks.

With regard to your comment about help desk backlog, I think that you may be confused about what that actually means. Our actual help desk that responds to customer queries and complaints (not deviation reports) has no backlog at all. It's the moderation desk (handled by the CEA team) that has backlog, and it's currently in a period of upgrades and enhancements that are reducing the backlog greatly each day. Last week the team closed over 6000 tickets and they are on track to beat that this week. We're also going to be recruiting for additional CEA members in the near future to bring more resources into the team, which will ultimately provide enhanced response times.

I'm sorry if you feel you have been brushed off. It's not that at all, more that every genre or category believes that their issue should be the top priority, and we've been swamped with duplicate reports.

So, I think we should make some headway on getting back on track to a better way of dealing with these reports by the end of the week. I hope this reassures you someway -- we love Rainmeter too!
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RainmeterNorway2011
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Re: Warning from the Rainmeter Team

Post by RainmeterNorway2011 »

Good that you are warning people. Not all think twice before installing anything like skins, applikations and so on.
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karmat
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Re: Warning from the Rainmeter Team

Post by karmat »

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jsmorley
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Re: Warning from the Rainmeter Team

Post by jsmorley »

karmat wrote:a few more comments from staff to read http://rainmeter.deviantart.com/blog/39762918/?offset=50#comments
I'm glad he stepped in and personally took care of the current rash of problems, and that they are FINALLY instituting a flag for reporting these kinds of problems that will allow them to be escalated for action quicker.

I await with great interest to see this happen, and how long it will take when we get new deviation with a virus in it. If it is not <24 hours, and preferably <1 hour from time of report to time of deletion, it's not a solution. The head of "Community Relations" can't be expected to jump in every time and personally deal with it, so unless some better process is really put in place, we will be right back here in a week from now.

However, let's see how it goes. I'm really glad we finally got their attention at least.
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Chewtoy
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Re: Warning from the Rainmeter Team

Post by Chewtoy »

Lets hope that that nutjob understands that Rainmeter protects it's users and stops thinking it's an easy target.
I'm actually really surprised dA have not implemented some sort of "virus-super-priority-ticket". Seeing how they are one of the biggest sites out there for customization you'd think they would be better prepared.

Anyhow. Glad this is being worked on at least. Even though it has gone a lot further than it should have.
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karmat
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Re: Warning from the Rainmeter Team

Post by karmat »

Still more infected skins coming in. I reported them to Otis and to the help desk.

Besides the Enigma and Speed skins still not taken down yet, there is another Enigma and Blue Vision.

Is Kaelri around to put in a complaint to dA, might hold more weight coming from the original author?