CAPTCHA'd

Posted on 23 May, 2008 by maximinus in Web design, Rant, Web development, Interface design

I'm sure you're all familiar with CAPTCHAs - those annoying things which require you to type in a bunch of letters and numbers from an image which tries to make it difficult for computers to read said characters.  I've seen several different varieties - ranging from fairly basic text (which doesn't do much to hamper OCR efforts), through ones which use really curly fonts, lines through the text, shapes intermingled with the characters, ones which have a picture of a cat or a dog on each letter, asking you to enter all those with a cat or all those with a dog.

The original idea behind CAPTCHA systems was good; I agree with it in principle.  However, spammers have found ways around many of them, including "data entry business opportunities" - which they send spam about, luring people to fill in CAPTCHAs for them, for use in submitting spam to websites - or, alternatively, simply getting them to post the spam.  Unfortunately, the trend seems to be to make the CAPTCHAs harder to read, which doesn't cut down on this as much as it would if the spammers were simply using OCR to attempt to decipher them.  All it does is make it more of a nuisance for legitimate users of the system.

My latest struggle with such a system involved an attempt to sign up for a forum account - which took me three goes.  Each attempt involved attempting to decipher a CAPTCHA image, which was so poorly done that 5 and S were utterly indistinguishable (perhaps they would have been, had I seen both at once; however I only ever saw one - (it looked like) the same one, in each of the three instances... I can't remember which it turned out to be).  Not only that, but I had to enter my desired password twice on each attempt, and answer a (fairly straightforward, although sometimes slightly ambiguous) question, which, like the CAPTCHA, changed each time.  I was so frustrated with this that I was going to completely give up on registering if it had failed me one more time.

The biggest problem with this was not even that the CAPTCHA was unclear - it was the fact that I had to attempt not only a new CAPTCHA, but a new human verification question each time (despite having passed the first and second), and re-enter my password a further two times per attempt.  Some systems also offer an audio alternative to the image; this option was also missing from this particular system.  Without this audio alternative, even if I could decipher all the other characters in a given CAPTCHA, if it had an S or a 5 in it, I had a 50% chance of failing it.

I wonder just how many people give up on posting a comment, registering an account or performing some other action on a website, simply because they can't decipher a CAPTCHA image?

EDIT:
Oh, one more thing - Sam Ruby raises a good point, which is highly related to my recent experience - when you've verified that somebody's a human, remember it!  Sure, expiry is probably a good thing - re-check periodically.  But presenting three different questions as well as three different CAPTCHAs and requiring me to type (and thus send via unencrypted HTTP) my password six times in order to register, simply because one of the two forms of human verification is poorly designed?  That's just overkill.

UPDATE FOR TAGGED.COM USERS:
Several people have posted comments stating that they are having problems with a "captcha fail limit exceeded" error on tagged.com.  I have removed all these comments as nobody was getting anywhere.
Tagged.com's help section states that the problem has been fixed - click here for more details.
If you are still experiencing this problem, you'll have to try contacting Tagged's support - click here.  I cannot provide any further help or information, as I am not a user of Tagged.com or in any way associated with it.

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A Bit of Feff

Posted on 29 April, 2008 by maximinus in Rant

Or, Geek Etymology 101

Spotted on IRC:
<Fredd> http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/feff/index.htm
<Fredd> Since alt+FEFF is the entry code for MS windows
<Fredd> I will now be referring to useless banter as feff
<Fredd> I believe this is excellent etymology for a geek term

I agree with him on that one - it's a perfect, geeky method for creating new words - with the bonus that they're going to be short and snappy.  I also think that feff is a great word to describe useless banter; it just sounds so utterly devoid of meaning that it fits like a glove.  I'll certainly be using it from now on - and I hope to see it come into (somewhat) common usage.  Wouldn't it be great to get a word derived from a unicode character's hexadecimal codepoint added to the dictionary?

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Semantics

Posted on 23 April, 2008 by maximinus in Rant

Is it just me, or have Bethesda Softworks forgotten the meaning of the word "demo" (in the context of a video game)?  Pete Hines of Bethesda has announced that there will be no demo of Fallout 3.  To quote bit-tech.net:

Hines explained that because Fallout 3 has been built as one thing, "there's no way to portion off a section and have it stand on its own without putting the whole game in the demo, which we're just not going to do."

He then went onto say that because of the open, free-roaming nature of the game, a demo would prohibitively limit the experience.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the very definition of a demo?  Is it not short for "demonstration" - meaning that it provides, in the case of a video game, a limited experience?

Admittedly, I'm not familiar with the game, but I can't really think of any way in which a game could be structured which would prevent a demo from being feasible.  So it's "open" and "free-roaming" in nature?  Surely the demo could be confined to a specific area - with a limited number of objectives available?  Sure, it won't give the full experience of the game - but it would give a feel for what the game will be like, such as the interface and playing style.

Surely Bethesda are shooting themselves in the foot with this one.  Give your potential customers nothing to try out for free, and they'll give you no money - I think it's fair to say that many people who would have otherwise played the demo and then gone on to perhaps purchase the game will, instead, turn to piracy to find out what the game's like.  Unfortunately for Bethesda, once you've pirated it to find out what it's like, especially if it's not an absolutely mind-blowing game, many such people will then, having already pirated it, lack the motivation to shell out hard-earned money for something they've already got - especially if it's not an absolutely mind-blowing game.

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Got Worms?

Posted on 18 March, 2008 by maximinus in Rant

I recently discovered, whilst trying to send a link from my laptop to my desktop machine, that Microsoft have evidently decided to finally do something about the Messenger worms that spread by sending links in instant messages.  You might think that it's great that they've finally done something - that is, until you find out what they've actually done.

So, what have they done, you ask?  Did they fix the hole(s) that the worms were using?  I'm not sure, but what I do know they've done is block all messages containing a URL containing "download.php" - if you try to send one, the message will be bounced immediately by the Messenger servers.  Even if they have fixed the holes which the worms have been exploiting, this is a ridiculous move - I shudder to think just how many legitimate messages are being bounced because of this.

To make matters even worse, there's nothing to say why it bounced - it just gives the standard "the following message could not be delivered to all recipients" message, which is used when a message can't be delivered for a legitimate reason.  Pidgin is a little more helpful than Microsoft's own client, stating that the "message may have not been sent because an unknown error occurred" - with other causes giving different messages (similar to that, but with "unknown error" replaced with something more specific).  The correct response to a threat such as a self-propagating worm is never to use easily-bypassed filtering to attempt to detect the worm's behaviour and block it - especially if such a filter is going to also block large amounts of legitimate usage.

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Stealth Camping

Posted on 17 March, 2008 by maximinus in Rant

Further to my earlier post regarding domain camping / squatting, I've recently stumbled upon a sly tactic from Bitvise, who I've found produce and sell an SSH daemon for Windows.  They've purchased the domain name putty.org, and have on it a very basic webpage, with a description of PuTTY and a link to the official PuTTY download page.  That's not the bad bit, however.

In addition to these details and this link, Bitcise have details (and links, of course) for their products Tunnelier (essentially an alternative to PuTTY and WinSCP) and WinSSHD.  WinSSHD is the one which caught my eye, because for too long, the only way to get SSH access to a Windows machine was using Cygwin.  Apparently, WinSSHD has been around for a while also, but I'd never heard of it before - probably because it's commercial software - and it costs $40USD for a single-machine personal license - much more if you need more licenses or are a business or even non-profit organisation.  There isn't any mention of it being non-free software on either the putty.org page or the pages that it links to for the Bitcise products

I wouldn't even be quite so annoyed at BitVise's sly tactic if they at least had a decent product - but I tested the trial, and found it to be very poor indeed.  Whilst it gave full access to the Windows filesystem (which Cygwin doesn't - at least by default), its shell was absolutely horrible.  Its command set appears to be some kind of mixture of Windows/DOS and unix commands, and it has serious issues if you try using a terminal window larger than the default size.  It also seemed to have difficulty actually displaying any more than one screen of text - it didn't allow scrolling, and it didn't clear the previous content, so after the end of the new line, the rest of the previous line would still sit there.  When I saw this, I couldn't be bothered testing any more, and immediately uninstalled the trial, because there's no way that it could be usable in that state.

Maybe it's not too bad if all you want is secure remote access to a Windows PC's filesystem - I didn't try using it for SCP, but they claim that it performs well when used with Tunnelier.  It might even do alright if you only want to tunnel other services (such as Remote Desktop or VNC) through the SSH connection (which would have been my primary use, as I used to use Cygwin for, before it decided that it no longer wanted to work on my PC).

That's not really the point of this post, anyway.  The point is that Bitvise are using a tactic which is essentially domain squatting, making it look as though it's somehow linked to PuTTY, and using it as a vehicle to advertise their commercial software, which they are essentially passing off as free/open-source software (by failing to mention anything about it being commercial software or how much it costs) in order to draw you in.  This really bugs me, because they're using underhand tactics to try to steal market share from free software.

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Invitation to Spam

Posted on 12 March, 2008 by maximinus in Rant, Web development

Running ShrinkThisLink, a free link shrinker, isn't quite as easy as you might expect.  As I recently mentioned, I recently commissioned a new spam detection system in order to try to pick up on links being used in spam without needing anyone to report the spam.

So far, this seems to be working quite well.  One way I can tell that it's working is that the number of people emailing me in relation to spammed links has increased.  You may be wondering right now how such an increase can be a good sign.  If you are, you evidently haven't run a website which spammers attempt to (ab)use.

I endeavour to reply to every single legitimate email sent to ShrinkThisLink - by hand, not with any kind of automated system.  Unfortunately, some people not only fail to recognise the email as spam and discard it, but proceed to click the links contained within.  When faced with a page informing them that "the link you have attempted to view has been blocked due to spamming or other abuse" and providing them with an email address to contact "if you believe this is in error," some of these people then proceed to contact that address and ask for further details on the spammed offer.  Surely replying to the email would make more sense?  I've even had some who forward the spam on, which, I will admit, is a step up from the people who complain about a link being blocked, but don't actually mention what the link in question is.


Between the reports of spam and the spam that's been forwarded in requests for further information on the "fantastic offer," it has become evident that spammers have realised that they really don't need to set up a mail server (or compromise one) in order to send their spam.  A disturbing trend is to use Yahoo! Groups invitations as a medium for spamming.

Yahoo! Groups invitations can be sent to any email address, and can contain text (including links) specified by the person sending them.  Spammers are taking advantage of these two facts to point people at websites completely unrelated to Yahoo! Groups en masse.  Yahoo! don't seem to be willing to do anything at all about this problem - I have personally reported several sets of Groups invitation spam, and have seen no evidence of them taking any action whatsoever.

My suggestion to Yahoo! - and indeed to anyone who currently offers an "invitation" sysem which allows the user to enter email addresses and arbitrary message content - is quite simple: change your approach.  I understand that the concept of inviting people to the website can be useful; however providing a form which accepts whatever the user provides, slaps it in an email and sends it to whatever addresses that same user provides, is the wrong way to go about it.  If you want to provide an invitation system, give the user a system which generates invitation links - either time-limited or single-use links.  Make the user send the emails themselves.  If they're genuinely trying to invite people (who they know) to the site, they'll be happy to send the links themselves (either via email or another form of communication such as posting the link on a blog or website, or sending it via instant message).  Spammers won't be so interested in the invitation system, though, since it won't actually benefit them in any way.

If, for some reason, you really think you need to keep the email-sending system, do not allow URLs in the message content (or, alternatively, don't even let the user edit the message).  If it's an invitation to a website, the website sending the email should automatically add the invitation link - and that should be the only link necessary (except perhaps a "don't send me these annoying invitation emails in future" link).  Please stop inviting spammers to send as much spam as they like through your site for free.  This means you, Yahoo!.

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Googlebomb?

Posted on 15 January, 2008 by maximinus in Rant, Web development

After 40,000+ pageviews and several inbound links, my posting here a couple of days ago entitled "Has Google gone MAD?" managed to plant itself in some very high positions in Google search results, including the #1 spot for the search term "Google gone mad" - which I thought was quite neat:


This evening, however, I went to show somebody that I was, in fact, top of the search results for "Google gone mad" - only to find that I wasn't.  I hunted through the first couple of pages... no sign of my blog... I went through the entire top hundred - and still nothing.  Then I searched for the entry directly by URL - and sure enough, it's not there.

I can only surmise that it's been removed from the Google index because it's been detected by Googlebomb prevention systems - gaining several inbound links and shooting to the #1 spot within a few short hours does seem somewhat suspicious, I guess.

This does, however, seem like something which could all to easily be abused; if people could previously perform googlebombs such as the infamous George W. Bush "miserable failure" bomb, surely it wouldn't be hard for people with malicious intent to similarly bomb a 3rd party's website, thus getting it completely removed from Google's index.  The impact is not as high as it could be, since it only seems to affect the single URL, not the entire domain; however I think it quite likely that there's some kind of threshold at which the entire site would be blocked, i.e. after a certain number of bombs on the one site, it would be assumed that the entire site is up to no good.

Update (16 January):
This evening, I checked again, and found that my top position has been reinstated.  This leaves me wondering quite what has been happening...

Update (21 January):
For the past few days, I seem to have lost the top spot again (for "google gone mad") - I can't find this site anywhere in the first few pages of results.  However, it does seem to be top for "google gone mad techblog" - so it's back in the index, but has completely lost its ranking for "google gone mad" - which seems to indicate that this effect could still be used to kill specific keywords / key phrases for any given website.

Update:
My blog seems to have settled again in top spot for the original phrase "Google gone mad" - so perhaps the detection systems respond to the new link rate dropping by slowly returning the page's rankings.  Sustained new link generation, on the other hand, could possibly keep a page out of the rankings on a more long-term basis; however if the rate is calculated based on number of unique websites (rather than webpages) which link to the site, it may prove difficult to sustain the required rate.

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Asus Eee PC

Posted on 9 January, 2008 by maximinus in Linux, Rant

I'm sure you've seen them - just about every man and his dog seems to have bought an Eee lately.  A lot of people seem to be modding in touchscreens - which I think is a really cool idea, and makes it much more usable (personally I think the touchpad, no matter how sensitive, is far too small to use properly).

Asus have now announced that they will be releasing Eee PCs with 8" and 8.9" screens - which I think is a good move, since the existing 7" screen looks as though it's swimming in an ocean of wasted space.  What surprises me, especially given the number of people modding them in, is that they have not announced a touchscreen version.  Also, the 8" version will have the same resolution as the 7" version - it would have been good for them to knock it up a notch; I certainly hope they do for the 8.9" version.

If Asus can pull off an 8.9" touchscreen with a decent resolution, with decent battery life, I'll be very tempted to buy one - and I'm sure many other people who are currently interested, but not enough to buy one, will be too... I'd say it'll increase sales quite nicely if they get it right.

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Xtraordinary Complexity

Posted on 23 August, 2007 by maximinus in Web design, Rant, Web development, Interface design

Last weekend, Xtra performed an email system "upgrade" which resulted in their customers' mail being inaccessible for 24 hours.  This in itself is not necessarily bad - they did give warning that it was going to happen, and it's understandable that such things need to be done from time to time.  The problems begin with the length of the outage - a full 24 hours, with some customers having no access for longer than this.

The main problems, however, relate to the consequences of this "upgrade" - and begin with those who use a mail client (i.e. not webmail) to access their email.  As part of the upgrade, Xtra changed their SMTP server address - and added mandatory SSL.  They do inform you (oddly enough, when you're trying to get to the "upgraded" webmail - but also over the phone if you lie and tell them that it's not to do with the mail server "upgrade" and thus can get through to a person rather than pre-recorded messages) that the address has changed - but never make mention of SSL.  They list the new port (465) and address (send.xtra.co.nz) but completely fail to mention that SSL is now mandatory.

This is a problem for those users - like my aunt, who has been unable to send email for several days until I was able to visit and sort it out - who do not know a lot about computers, the Internet or email, who perhaps, like my aunt, have had their computer set up by family or friends and know how to use it but not how to configure it.  In the case of my aunt, she managed to work out where to change the settings - with some help - and changed the address and port.  However, since there had been no mention of it at all, she did not enable SSL - and so still could not send email.  Although I know a bit about mail servers etc, and in fact run my own mail server, I didn't immediately recognise port 465 as being the standard SMTP over SSL port.  How anyone else is supposed to work it out, I don't know - a bit of deft googling managed to turn up this article on the Xtra site which eventually mentions that you need to enable SSL.


The next problem, which is probably even worse than that one, relates to the web mail system.  It used to be a relatively simple process to get to and use their webmail system - but no longer.  Especially if you haven't used the new system yet.

First off, you need to use a modern browser.  If your browser isn't supported, it doesn't tell you - it just sticks you in a loop of signing in, clicking through to continue a couple of times, and then being returned to the login page.  Once you find a browser in which it works, you have to go through several steps of pointless nonsense, including downloading and installing a few bits and pieces relating to their new "bubbles" - this took a few minutes on my aunt's ADSL connection; I shudder to think how long that would take on dialup.

Once you've finally managed to register for the new system, you log in and end up on an overcomplicated, customisable start page.  When you eventually locate the "Mail" link, and you move your mouse over it, a new box "slides" out from under it to reveal a summary listing new messages - just how good this is, I'm not sure, as my aunt had no new messages, so there was a large box with a small amount of text swimming in it to that effect.  Clicking on the Mail link took us to the new webmail interface - which I didn't have a good look at, but didn't look terribly easy to use or particularly good.  I think it might be using the current Yahoo! mail system, but, not having a Yahoo! account myself, I can't verify this.


Then there's the entire concept of a social networking site.  I would imagine that their users would fall into two broad categories:

• Those who, like my aunt, are not at all interested in this crap; and
• Those who are interested in a social networking site, and, as a result, are already signed up to at least one of the plethora of other free social networking sites out there

Also - I haven't investigated, so don't know if this is entirely accurate - surely using this system would be somewhat pointless, as I'd assume that only Xtra customers can get a "bubble page" or whatever it is they're calling them.  Even if other people can sign up for them, will anybody who's not an Xtra customer do so?  I would suggest that the answer is almost certainly "no" - at best, a few people might sign up out of morbid curiosity.  This means that you're essentially restricted to networking with other Xtra users - whereas if you use any of the other social networking sites out there, you can network with anybody with access to the Internet.


I'll admit that their old webmail system was old and was begging to be upgraded or replaced; but this is not the way they should have done it.  What they've done is alienate a lot of users, confuse many more and just brass off the rest.  That's just those of their customers who actually use their Xtra mail, of course - the rest of their customers won't even care in the slightest.

I think I heard that Xtra were saying that "Bubble" was going to provide "an exciting range of new services that will change the way you use the internet" - I'd say that the only way it has changed the way that some people use the Internet is which provider they use it through.

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Progress Bars

Posted on 14 August, 2007 by maximinus in Rant, Interface design

Currently preparing a machine for re-use by a new staff member who'll be starting tomorrow, I'm thus stuck uninstalling a bunch of no-longer-needed software (and will shortly be installing some more software).  This means that I'm once again faced with progress bars.

On the whole, they're a great idea - they give some idea of how long something is going to take.  However, a lot of companies - Microsoft being a big one - seem to be unable to use them properly.

A progress bar should fill up throughout the process - starting completely empty, and ending up full just as the process is completed.  Microsoft (and others), however, take various non-intuitive approaches which ruin the entire point of the progress bar:

• Progress bar fills up completely long before the process is complete - often with a message along the lines of "Time remaining: 0 seconds"
• Progress bar does not fill up, but rather has a small bar which scrolls along and back repeatedly (or just scrolls one way repeatedly)
• Progress bar fills up - then starts all over again for another sub-process, perhaps with a message indicating that it's now doing some other sub-process
• I have nothing against this, so long as there's also an overall progress bar - which there generally isn't

Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head - there may be one or two other strange behaviours also.

All of these abnormal behaviours add only confusion to the system - not information, as a properly-used progress bar should - and, in my opinion, should be avoided unless there's a very good reason.

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Update-o-rama

Posted on 11 April, 2007 by maximinus in Rant

After installing some recent Windows updates, my work machine started complaining about system DLLs being relocated in memory, whenever Windows started up.  I've now discovered that the problem is caused by one of the updates - and there's another update that fixes it.  You can either get the fix via Windows Update, or download it directly.

The error message it was giving was along the lines of:
Rthdcpl.exe - Illegal System DLL Relocation
The system DLL user32.dll was relocated in memory. The application will not run properly. The relocation occurred because the DLL C:WindowsSystem32Hhctrl.ocx occupied an address range reserved for Windows system DLLs. The vendor supplying the DLL should be contacted for a new DLL.

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Beeping Mad

Posted on 13 February, 2007 by maximinus in Rant, Interface design

So, after I thought I'd managed to get pretty much everything on my replacement work PC set up the way I like it, I noticed that the machine seemed to be beeping a lot.  One of the main causes was new mail arriving - any time a new message arrived, a beep would emanate from the PC speaker.

Somebody on IRC (xslogic) suggested that it was because I didn't have a sound card (well, not installed, anyway).  I checked, and sure enough, the sound card drivers didn't appear to be installed.  I installed them, only to find that Windows sounds would now attempt to play through the PC speaker - for everything like opening a folder or a page loading in IE, and whatever else Windows makes annoying noises for.  I then changed the sound profile to "no sounds" so that these annoying noises no longer existed, and thought that was that.

Much to my dismay, it wasn't long before I received another email - and heard another beep.  This I couldn't understand, since it could no longer be due to Windows, but must now be Outlook itself doing this - and on the old machine I'd had no such problem.  After some serious option-diving, I found the culprit:
Tools->Options->Preferences (tab)->E-mail Options...->Advanced E-mail Options...->When new items arrive
This has three checkboxes: "Play a sound," "Briefly change the mouse cursor" and "Show an envelope icon in the system tray."  I unchecked the first two and left the third, since it is still good to be able to tell at a glance that there's new mail.

Note: This is Outlook 2002 (XP) - this setting, if it even exists, may be located elsewhere in other versions.

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Squatters Galore

Posted on 27 January, 2007 by maximinus in Rant, Web development

Domain squatters, that is.  Squatters, campers - whatever you want to call them.

There's a site I'd like to develop, but I need a name for it.  A short, snappy, memorable, relevant name - that has an appropriate domain name available.  Every single idea that I or anybody else who's tried has come up with has been taken by domain squatters.  Some of them have the cheek to ask ludicrous amounts of money for these domains - such as one boasting a whopping 1 hit per month, which wanted USD$1650, with a minimum/reserve price of USD$1000.  Others are spammy search portals, and still others simply leave it to languish with no accessible website on them.

Why is this allowed to happen?  Why are these bastards allowed to register these domain names, and then not do anything of any use with them - especially those who are trying to sell them?  This is completely ludicrous, as it's really no different to buying a sandwich and then offering it to people for a hundred times the price - other than the fact that you can easily by another sandwich which will do the exact same job, at the same price that the other person bought theirs for.

I believe that there should be some kind of regulation, perhaps administered by a body such as IANA, whereby the registration is revoked on any domain name which is registered and then attempted to be on-sold without a site first being established.  The same should also apply for any domain name which is used solely for spammy search portals, and perhaps also domains which are not pointed anywhere (and not used for mail, etc) for a certain period.  It would probably be far too labour-intensive to have this body check all domains, so it would be best run on a reporting basis - if you find a domain that you'd like to register, and it's taken by a squatter, you report it and they investigate; the registrant then has a chance to defend their right to registration, and if they can't prove that they have legitimate cause to have the domain name, it is revoked and the reporter may register it.

For crying out loud, even domainsquatters.com is taken - by a domain squatter - as are cybersquatter.net and cybersquatters.net.

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Movable Madness

Posted on 8 January, 2007 by maximinus in Rant, Interface design

Which idiot at Microsoft decided that in Office applications, not only should you be able to move toolbars around (with no way to lock them in place) - but also the menu bar?!
Seriously - who on Earth is going to want their menu bar running down the side of the window?  Or along the bottom?  Even better yet, I can even detach it from the window completely, and have it float somewhere - even off on a different screen to the application itself.  Why would anybody EVER want to do that?!

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Rank This!

Posted on 7 August, 2006 by maximinus in Rant, Web development

As if I didn't already know, I've just seen absolutely irrefutable proof that website ranking systems like Alexa are extremely inaccurate.  By only having access to data from people using their toolbar, their stats can be extremely skewed.

Today, for some reason, ShrinkThisLink (the free link shrinker which I created and run) has spiked to an Alexa "Daily Reach" of 10 per million users.  This makes absolutely no sense, since according to Google Analytics and Awstats, two stats tracking systems which I use and which both collect actual data (awstats from log files, Google Analytics from javascript embedded in pages) both show that if anything, traffic on Saturday (which is the day the Alexa information is apparently for) was BELOW previous days.  The only explanation that I can come up with is that for whatever reason, a higher number of those visitors were using Internet Explorer (which my stats do seem to confirm) with the Alexa toolbar installed.  This proves that it doesn't take a lot to cause reasonable amounts of change in the Alexa statistics, since when you average out the higher percentage of IE users and the lower number of overall users, you should end up with about equal numbers - demonstrating just how skewed these systems are.

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