The Wise Monkeys

Recently 4 Wise Monkeys pulled a number of posts after objections from DC Marketing (the blog has enough exposure now that we need to play things safe)… We have reevaluated a number of issues that have been brought to our attention and are in the process of drafting some posts that we will release in the next couple of days (assuming it all flies past the lawyers ok). These posts will outline three differant scams currently in circulation and give everyone a clearer indication of what to do if they are affected (these posts will include more information on the dc marketing scam).

In no way do we condone illegal activity, against DC Marketing or any other company in any way, shape, or form. We understand as consumers you are upset, but making illegal threats is not the way to win the fight and you only hamper the efforts that we have put in here.

Complain to the government agencies (see the phone scams page for more information on how to do this), to get your point across.

Update: Earlier today we posted a few articles, that we later withdrew due to legal reasons, this information included reports that were wrongly directed towards DC Marketing.  We apologize for the misconception this may have brought. We are currently confirming a lot of our information with Optus and will post what we can once we have something more substancial. If you feel you can contribute to these posts then please feel free to stop by our forums (click here for link).

Despite the claims of Ingo Gruber from DC Marketing that this website and the media have not affected his business we have noticed some rather big changes.

First of all, not long after our recent media exposure - DCM Communications changed their contact information (We will be making a new post with current contact information in the coming days whilst we find what we can in the public sector).

The following news posting was made on their sister site (vrpan.com):

Mail Addresses

Due to a spam attack on our mailboxes, all mail addresses on this site to contact us have been changed. Please look T&C for new mail addresses to contact us!

We have also noticed that a number of numbers have been taken out of circulation - That’s not saying that they aren’t still running their unethical operation - That is just saying that they are cutting back (a lot).

And to top it off, Ingo continues to claim we have not affected him AT ALL! All whilst he makes a daily comment on the website (click here to read the latest comments).

Thanks to everyone sending us mail - We appreciate the support and offers for help. We are striving to answer every e-mail but given the sheer volume of them it may take us two or three days to get back! Also, anyone who is informing us about various DC Marketing practices or other unethical businesses / scams should include a link to their webpage (if you have one) which we will add in our posting. Cheers guys!

Thanks to Gijs for this article

WASHINGTON D.C. — A stalker hid under a woman’s bed for two days — just for the chance to be alone with her. How he got the keys to her house is the scariest part, and it’s a serious reminder of the need to be cautious before handing over your keys.

Click here to view the article (there is even a video of the stalker with his camera under her bed)

A thread popped up on the 4 Wise Monkeys forums about a possible new Google bug…

The bug basically means that you will see the following text instead of Google’s homepage:

We’re sorry… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now. We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon.

I have investigated this and posted the reasons as to why this bug occours as well a fix on my blog (there are also some screenshots of this bug thanks to Beuy).

If you are being affected by this or are purely interested then Click here to read my blog entry!

One of the 4 Wise Monkeys (skelm) does a fair bit of coding in his spare time (and for money any businesses who are interested!).

He has written a free RSS Alerter that will display gmail notifyer like alerts whenever there is a new news posting on one of your specified websites.

You can use this program to keep completely up to date with the going ons of 4 Wise Monkeys and to recieve desktop alerts when there is some progress with DC Marketing!

Click here to read more about this or to see how you can get a copy of the source code!

Or click here to view the forum thread about this app!

Click here for a screenshot of an alert
Click here for a screenshot of the menu

Wow… Who would have thought that we would have had this much support from the public. When we started fighting this we really had no idea how big DC Marketings scam is. It is great to see the Australian public band together to fight this… Now enough of that, and on to the juicy stuff:

4 Wise Monkeys has done an interview with A Current Affair detailing our involvement in fighting the DC Marketing scam (Yes Mr. Gruber, I do beleive this is a scam and will call it a scam if that is how I feel: A scam by definition: “A ploy by a shyster to raise money.” or “A confidence trick, confidence game, or con for short (also known as a scam)”). A Current Affair has also done some great work with the research they have done as well as the information we have provided. You can watch this tonight after 6:30 (i’ve no idea what exact time it will be on) on Channel 9.

DC Marketing, sit down, enjoy the show and then be happy that you still have your “happy customer base” (really, how can you keep saying you have a ‘customer base’ when you are using missed call marketing practices?)

Since we have had this massive hit spike we have been trying to find ways that we can keep people coming back to the website.

One of the biggest problems we have had is that from when this website first went live we have had a very difficuly domain name to remember….

We have been negotiating with the owner of wisemonkeys.com to sell us the domain… unfortunately we just can’t afford the purchase price at this point in time

Since that’s the case I’ve actually weirded out a bit on the other monkies and bought two new domains to point to http://4wisemonkeys.com. These are http://wisemonkies.com (notice the inacurate spelling) and http://4wisemonkies.com (because I just know with all the media attention some people are going to spell it wrong!).

Please allow 24hours for these to propogate and then feel free to use them.

Enjoy!