This one is interesting because it seems harmless, if not even helpful (Monitoring DNS errors). What am I missing here?
"I’m sure you get business proposals all the time, so I’ll get straight to the point. I hope what I’m proposing is a little different and might actually interest you. I like Hover Zoom+ as a great alternative to it’s bigger brother Hover Zoom that lost its glamour over the last couple of months.
We're conducting a DNS error research and we’re interested in small amounts of anonymous data that you might be able to provide via your Chrome extension. Our research has been going on for years and Google has never had the slightest problem with it.
- Compatible with Google’s strict policies
- No personal user data
- No ads, no malware
The data we’re interested in are basically just DNS errors:
- NXD – Non Existent Domain - the domain that a user entered that resulted in a DNS error.
- A time stamp – when it happened.
- GEO – where it happened (USA, UK, RU etc.).
- A unique randomly generated user ID (can be hashed, not traceable back to the user). Please, don’t confuse this with the user IP address.
And that’s all. You can either use our script or collect the data on your own and send it to us via an FTP server, API etc. There’s a lot of different ways we can do this. We pay on a monthly basis. The payments depend on user GEOs, but it would be in thousands of dollars per year.
Is this worth at least a brief discussion? Looking forward to hearing from you.
A while back I reached out to you regarding a DNS error research our company conducts. Hover Zoom+ would be an ideal medium for our research. In return, this could become a solid new revenue stream for you.
Our method has been going on for years and we’ve never had the slightest problem with Google. We pay regularly on a monthly basis. For you it would be in tens of thousands of dollars per year - the amount depends on your users base and data quality.
If you’re concerned about including third party scripts, there’s still a lot of ways we can make this work.
Please let me know if this is worth a brief discussion to you."
Just a guess: they could buy domain names that are available and for some reason get queries. For example often misspelled domains. This would not be forbidden but still a little shady.
Well, money's changing hands, and they're not specifying any clear intent of goodwill.
Therefore, there is likely some business interest at best, or anti-user behavior at worst.
It's not hard to write a script that ostensibly does one thing but very sneakily carries information about another thing. For example, write a bad 'hashing' function? Piece of cake.
"I’m sure you get business proposals all the time, so I’ll get straight to the point. I hope what I’m proposing is a little different and might actually interest you. I like Hover Zoom+ as a great alternative to it’s bigger brother Hover Zoom that lost its glamour over the last couple of months.
We're conducting a DNS error research and we’re interested in small amounts of anonymous data that you might be able to provide via your Chrome extension. Our research has been going on for years and Google has never had the slightest problem with it.
- Compatible with Google’s strict policies
- No personal user data
- No ads, no malware
The data we’re interested in are basically just DNS errors:
- NXD – Non Existent Domain - the domain that a user entered that resulted in a DNS error.
- A time stamp – when it happened.
- GEO – where it happened (USA, UK, RU etc.).
- A unique randomly generated user ID (can be hashed, not traceable back to the user). Please, don’t confuse this with the user IP address.
And that’s all. You can either use our script or collect the data on your own and send it to us via an FTP server, API etc. There’s a lot of different ways we can do this. We pay on a monthly basis. The payments depend on user GEOs, but it would be in thousands of dollars per year.
Is this worth at least a brief discussion? Looking forward to hearing from you.
A while back I reached out to you regarding a DNS error research our company conducts. Hover Zoom+ would be an ideal medium for our research. In return, this could become a solid new revenue stream for you.
Our method has been going on for years and we’ve never had the slightest problem with Google. We pay regularly on a monthly basis. For you it would be in tens of thousands of dollars per year - the amount depends on your users base and data quality.
If you’re concerned about including third party scripts, there’s still a lot of ways we can make this work.
Please let me know if this is worth a brief discussion to you."