Earthlink/Aluria The Face They Don't Want You To See
By Robin Laudanski
March 11, 2006
Most major companies have a Code of Business Conduct and Ethics. Most of them also provide an anonymous line to call and make complaints through. One would think if you were to uncover an executive misrepresenting himself, action would be taken almost immediately. One would also think if an executive were making defamatory statements action would again be taken. Recent experience has taught me this is not so.
Earthlink has a 16 page Code of Business Conduct and Ethics (CBCE) which they require their employees to acknowledge and agree to by signing. Throughout this article I’ll be posting snippets from Earthlink’s CBCE as reference points, I will include a section reference in brackets as applicable.
Recently we discovered and reported some information related to WhenU and the certification of WhenU by Aluria as being spyware free, was removed off of the Aluria website. Despite the fact that I provided pictorial evidence of the certification being present on the Aluria website, Mr. David Goldstone in charge of PR and Marketing for Earthlink/Aluria denied the certification was removed sometime between 6:30-7:55PM EST on March 2, 2006. When asked why the information was removed off of the website he wrote,
"The Aluria information was removed by the previous ownership in May of last year. We are aware that there are some old web caches that are still displaying the old information, as I have found it myself. Earthlink and the current Aluria managment have had nothing to do with it. You would have to check with the previous owners for their reasons"
When asked "What "cache" are you talking about David? A "cache" on Aluria's servers? How long does your cache last? A year? We pulled this image _live_ from AluriaSoftware.com end of last week:", by Paul Laudanski. Mr. Goldstone responded "The certificate expired in Sept of 2005 and carried through the buyout by one month. If the certificate is expired, why keep it up?" Which I could agree with, however it still doesn’t explain the “cache”. I have attempted to find a reasonable solution which would support Mr. Goldstone’s explanation of a “cache”, I simply haven’t been able to find anything to support keeping a cache of a single page, which is no longer accurate for 5+ months, to have it suddenly disappear after being contacted for comment. When we originally obtained the following screenshot, we arrived at the page via a live link on the Aluria site. Therefore it can’t be a search engine cache, and it certainly isn’t a local browser cache. Please note the url in the screenshot browser bar.
Sadly the denial and deception doesn’t stop there. The following is taken from the CBCE (introduction p.2 p.4)
All EarthLink employees must conduct themselves according to the standards and basic principles contained in this Code and should strive to avoid even the appearance of improper behavior. EarthLink executive officers are also employees, and thus this Code applies equally to such persons; this Code also applies to members of EarthLink’s Board of Directors. In addition, all EarthLink employees must promptly report suspected violations of the Code. The Code should also be followed by EarthLink’s agents and representatives, including consultants. Although this Code references “employees” throughout, its application to all appropriate persons as described above is presumed. Always remember that ethical conduct is not just something we acknowledge on a policy form and then ignore. It is an ongoing process, and each day we need to ensure that we are performing our jobs for EarthLink with the highest level of integrity.
……
Employees who violate the standards in this Code, or who fail to promptly report violations of the Code, will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment. If you are in or become aware of a situation that you believe may violate or lead to a violation of this Code, follow the guidelines, if any, set forth in the applicable section of the Code, or those described in Section 13, the Compliance Procedures & Reporting section of this Code.
When I first started to look through the CBCE I was looking for something specific about misrepresentation. It would seem Mr. Carlson thought it would be appropriate to misrepresent himself on
download.com His username there is the same as the one he is using on SpywareWarrior, Rick8343. We were told by Mr. Goldstone that download.com was asked to remove the review as Mr. Carlson didn’t identify himself as the vendors representative. For that reason I am including the following screenshot.
The following excerpt is taken from CBCE (7. Competition and Fair Dealing p.1)
We seek to outperform our competition fairly and honestly. We seek competitive advantages through superior performance, never through unethical or illegal business practices. Stealing proprietary information, possessing trade secret information that was obtained without the owner’s consent, or inducing such disclosures by past or present employees of other companies is prohibited. Each employee should endeavor to respect the rights of and deal fairly with EarthLink’s customers, suppliers, business partners, competitors and employees. No employee should take unfair advantage of anyone through manipulation, concealment, abuse of privileged information, misrepresentation of material facts, or any other intentional unfair-dealing practice.
And this (7. Competition and Fair Dealing - point 2):
Employees should be accurate and truthful with customers, and take particular care when describing the quality, features or availability of our products and services. Be similarly careful if you describe a competitor’s products or services. It is unwise to criticize a competitor to a customer, and it is inappropriate to interfere with any contract between a competitor and a customer of the competitor.
If you read the thread at
SpywareWarrior, it will soon become clear how many ways Mr. Carlson violated the above section of the CBCE. In point of fact he admits at one point he was intentionally being deceptive.
Through the entire exchange in the forum Mr. Carlson did nothing more then dance around the real issue, why try to remove the information related to the WhenU certification, and make unfounded accusations. He still maintains that WhenU was never delisted despite the fact that AOL required a second distro for their customers to ensure that they could remove it if they desired, and testing which indicates there was a time when
WhenU was not detected.
In one of the many posts Mr. Carlson made in the SpywareWarrior thread he talks about getting sued. Despite the fact I had told Mr. Carlson if he wanted to discuss what I had written to please do so on CastleCops, he chose to instead continue with the discussion on SpywareWarrior making comments about both my article and myself personally. Finally I posted asking him directly “Mr. Carlson in one of your previous posts you mentioned being sued. If what I have written is false why am I not being sued? Why not let the courts sort it out?” It was two minutes after his last post. It took less then 30 minutes for Mr. Goldstone to get involved. I believed then and still do believe that Mr. Carlson was also posting as “the voice of reason”, although I can't prove it.
In order to properly put things into perspective you need to remember that at this time during the exchange I hadn’t mentioned anything about being an Earthlink customer. I once again tried to get clarification from Mr. Goldstone with regard to him suggesting I hadn't attempted to contact him until after my initial article was published. I was told I was being petty, I did not at that time respond as I was hoping to be able to glean a little more information before going back to the lie again. One thing which I found disturbing was that Mr. Goldstone attempted to suggest that Mr. Carlson was working on his own, that his comments had nothing to do with Earthlink.
The following is taken from the Earthlink website http://www.earthlink.net/about/cvb/
What's important at EarthLink? We are convinced that the key to creating a truly great organization is an intense focus on the values that guide its people's actions. These are EarthLink's "Core Values and Beliefs". If we don't seem to be living up to them, call us on it!
We respect the individual, and believe that individuals who are treated with respect and given responsibility respond by giving their best.
We require complete honesty and integrity in everything we do.
We make commitments with care, and then live up to them. In all things, we do what we say we are going to do.
Work is an important part of life, and it should be fun. Being a good businessperson does not mean being stuffy and boring.
We love to compete, and we believe that competition brings out the best in us.
We are frugal. We guard and conserve the company's resources with at least the same vigilance that we would use to guard and conserve our own personal resources.
We insist on giving our best effort in everything we undertake. Furthermore, we see a huge difference between "good mistakes" (best effort, bad result) and "bad mistakes" (sloppiness or lack of effort).
Clarity in understanding our mission, our goals, and what we expect from each other is critical to our success.
We are believers in the Golden Rule. In all our dealings we will strive to be friendly and courteous, as well as fair and compassionate.
We feel a sense of urgency on any matters related to our customers. We own problems and we are always responsive. We are customer-driven.
I decided to take them up on the suggestion to call them on not living up to the core values and pointed out to Mr. Goldstone that Paul and I are Earthlink customers, because our ISP has an agreement with Earthlink wherein, if our dsl connection becomes unavailable we can use our dialup connection through Earthlink. I posed the following questions to Mr. Goldstone:
"Please explain how Mr. Carlson a representative of Earthlink has followed the above with the people he has been interacting with in this thread? Or are people only worthy of being treated with respect if are known to be Earthlink customers?"
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could expect actual customer service when you point out that you are a customer? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if your questions would be answered in a timely and truthful manner? Mr. Goldstone replied, “We do value your patronage and as I have stated, our company is now aware of the issues you have brought up in this forum and take it as internal issue. I really can't comment on it any further than that.
"On behalf of EarthLink, I apologize for any grief or inconvenience this issue has caused you. "
To me that is not only lackluster, it is rather insulting and extremely inadequate, as I stated in the thread it reads like, "We regret to inform you that we don't care"
From the onset Mr. Carlson made things personal. There are multiple occasions both in the SpywareWarrior thread and elsewhere that he mentions either being the former CEO/Pres and/or soon to be former VP. Mr. Carlson chose to ignore my invitation to discuss the matter on CastleCops, and instead chose to continue attacking me making statements which are defamatory. Paul and I talk to vendors and experts which work with various vendors throughout the week, I wonder if I posted a list of all of them if they would come under fire from Mr. Carlson too. I also wonder if Mr. Carlson decided to make things personal with me, because CastleCops was never interested in the Aluria product? We were approached by Christina Bui about having CastleCops certified as being Spyware Free. My first thought was if a security site needs to have a vendor certify the site as being Spyware Free, it isn’t a very good security site. Paul and I found our questions weren’t answered as thoroughly as we would have liked, and the approach to promoting the product seemed a little pushy to us, we decided to not promote it on CastleCops.
I’m going to speculate for just a moment about the outcome as it relates to Mr. Carlson. I believe he’s been told to keep a low profile. He was leaving his position at the end of the month anyway, so what are they going to do fire him? All they want him to do is keep his mouth shut because he’s making Earthlink look bad. Once his time is done, he’ll get his great big fat severance package and move on to the next victim. I only hope that Mr. Carlson next employer does a thorough search on him prior to hiring him or the next companies stock might start to fall too.
The most recent ELNK information is available from Yahoo
Interestingly enough the stock started to fall right after the first time Mr. Carlson replied to my initial article. Maybe coincidence, maybe people just don’t like being lied to, I know I don’t.
The problem with this entire thing is that Mr. Goldstone, after previously mentioning that he knew Mr. Carlson was posting/blogging on several locations tried to say that he didn’t know what was going on. I’m sure the reason for that is because Earthlink wants to put as much distance between Mr. Carlson and themselves as possible for liability reasons. I’m also sure it is a lie. Earthlink knew he was doing it. Mr. Carlson at the time of his posting was an Earthlink employee in an executive position, one would hope anyone in an executive position would realize that they are a role model for other employees, they are a public face of the company and they need to conduct themselves in a responsible manner. The fact still remains no one at Earthlink did anything until I actually sent an e-mail suggesting someone needed to take a look at the thread.
You’ll recall I previously mentioned the lie about the initial time I attempted to contact Mr. Goldstone. I decided it was time to address the issue again. The following is taken from the third page of the SpywareWarrior thread. My apologies to
Mr. Rubenking for misspelling his name.
You also mentioned I was being petty over the initial lie about when I contacted you. Maybe I am. There is this thing called integrity, it is something I personally place a lot of value on. To me it means being responsible for your actions, it means doing what you say and saying what you do. Through this entire exchange beginning with Mr. Ruebenking's reply on PCMag, the time difference has changed, even the way in which you logged the call has changed. First it was an electronic call log and two hours after the article was published, now it is a time stamp and two hours after I say that I called. Did it ever occur to you that my call log was through my phone company? It's long distance to call you, regardless all calls on that line incoming and outgoing are logged by them. If the truth can't be told about something that simple how is anything else supposed to be believed?
Once again,
if the truth can’t be told about something that simple, how are we to believe anything else said by Earthlink?
I find it remarkable that no one else in the thread was given an apology. Apparently Earthlink needs to be told someone is a customer before they will apologize for the deplorable behavior of one of their staff. Apparently they think it is acceptable for their employees to engage in character attacks and making defamatory statements.
As I stated in my response article to Mr. Carlson, it is all about perception. As far as I’m concerned no one at Earthlink has taken responsibility as they should have for Mr. Carlson’s obviously malicious attempt to discredit multiple people. Instead Mr. Goldstone tried to disavow knowledge of Mr. Carlson’s actions, after he had already mentioned him posting at SpywareWarrior, and stated he thought Mr. Carlson’s response was appropriate. Both of those comments came in response to me suggesting that Mr. Carlson was acting on his own, during our phone conversation. Now Mr. Goldstone wants me and everyone else to believe that it was his personal opinion, despite the fact that the comment came during a conversation I had requested to get a comment from Earthlink.
Mr. Goldstone et al here is a little point to remember. If you are on a business call, you are a representative of that business. If you are stating your own personal opinion about any given subject you need to specify it is your own personal opinion, and not the opinion of the company you are representing.
Note: The wrong image was mistakely posted to this article, it has been corrected 12:00PM EST
