The Plot To Hijack Your Hard Drive 181
An anonymous reader writes Business Week Online examines the business practices of spammers and pop-up advertisers, using much-maligned Direct Revenue as an example case. The article discusses the history of the company, their rocky road through good and bad times, and what they're willing to to get your eyes on their ads." From the article: "Among Direct Revenue's alumni, pride over technical cunning mingles with regret for exasperating so many computer users. After waffling on the issue during a long interview, one former Dark Arts wizard sighs and sums up his version of the company credo with an elegiac observation by abolitionist Frederick Douglass: 'Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.'"
Simple Solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Patient: "Doctor it hurts when I do this."
Doctor: "Then stop doing it!!!"
--Johnny hates stupid!
Re:Naive (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the spyware people acknowledge their evil? (Score:5, Insightful)
From early on, a small group of programmers at Direct Revenue focused on how to protect their employer's programs once they were lodged in a computer, current and former employees say. The team called itself Dark Arts after the term for evil magic in the Harry Potter series. One of the biggest threats Dark Arts addressed came from competing software. The presence of multiple spyware programs can so cripple a computer that no ads manage to get seen.
In my opinion, spyware that purposely damages other software without user consent(even if the target software is spyware) is really just a virus, trojan, or something like that. Seriously, these people need to just chill out and stop screwing with everyone's PCs.
When will people learn? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also from TFA: "Spyware rakes in an estimated $2 billion a year in revenue, or about 11% of all Internet ad business, says the research firm IT-Harvest. Direct Revenue's direct customers have included such giants as Delta Air Lines (DALRQ ) and Cingular Wireless. It has sold millions of dollars of advertising passed along by Yahoo. And Direct Revenue has received venture capital from the likes of Insight Venture Partners, a respected New York investment firm."
People need to learn to stop following links that anger them! If no one purchased goods and services from these irritants, they would lose their 11% market share and slowly go away. I subscribe to Netflix, but I would never follow one of their links from a popup.
Windows assumptions rampant (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That's No Excuse (Score:1, Insightful)
-Beer, it's not just for breakfast anymore!
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
"LOL!!!
Too bad that part will automatically cause most people to ignore a very insightful and accurate comment.
Mod me to hell if you want, but you can't deny what he said.
Clicking on ads (Score:3, Insightful)
Is ad revenue no longer based on pay-per-click? Because if it is, I don't know who is clicking on them.
Microsoft's popups (Score:2, Insightful)
their product that promises to protect you against popups:
"Windows Defender (Beta 2) is a free program
that helps you stay productive by protecting
your computer against pop-ups"
Hurry up and interrupt users again, before it is too late!
We're the good guys, really ! (Score:2, Insightful)
'users may install a helper program, the Windows Genuine
Advantage plug-in, to enhance their download experience'
--
Microsoft staff never sees this
if they eat their own dog food.
Re:In the end.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google isn't above questionable behavior, though. Look at their new payment service. Basically, if you are selling something, you can put a link on your order page that lets your customer use Google to handle the payment. Sounds pretty cool, right? However, one of Google's requirements is that you have that link on every ordering page of yours, and they require that the link includes the image they supply from their server. You can't make a local copy of the image on your server. You have to reference the image on their server from your page.
What this means is that everytime someone buys something through your site, even if they don't use Google to pay, Google gets a hit on that image. So, Google gets an accurate count of how many people visit your order page, and gets their IP addresses.
If they correlate that with searches from the same IP address, they are getting a hell of a lot of valuable information.
Re:er... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's about Them taking whatever they can get from you without you complaining/caring enough to do something about it
Where does it say that the slavery of this millenia is actual bondage? Who says it's not a combination of the things above?
EULA's Share The Blame (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a little deeper than that (Score:4, Insightful)
The quotation is the general principle, which enables you to understand a lot of different things, some of which are more important than others. It explains, for example, why the American people are subject to the Patriot Act, DMCA, and eternal copyrights. None of these have much in common with either of the things youi mentioned.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Here's how to REALLY stop it... (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) Do not use IE or outlook
(2) Do not click on shit indiscriminatly. Only run programs from places you trust.
(3) Do not trust places like crazyivansdiscountsoftware.com.ru or hotthrobbingboobies.com.za
(4) If you need penis enlargement or prescriptions, go to a doctor. If you need porn, go to the usenet.
Smart... Real Smart... (Score:3, Insightful)
However... despite the distaste I have for lawyers, I think a class action lawsuit would be an appropriate retaliation. I would love to see the adware companies given a complete cash-ectomy, and that would make others think twice about it.
I volunteer my share of the proceeds to the EFF.
Re:Here's how to stop it... (Score:4, Insightful)
When having sex with a potentially infected prostitute, wear three condoms and wash your gonads in bleach afterwards.
Alternatively, don't sleep with infected whores.
(Mods: I am not trolling. I am pointing out the absurdity of having to use so many layers of security when an alternative OS would solve all those issues without the need for so many layers of security. It's a joke. Laugh.)
Re:When will people learn? (Score:1, Insightful)
How did you learn about Netflix? Was it because you saw it in a popup? Links followed or not, you're trying to get people to hear about a product; if they follow the link great, if they don't follow the link but later look up the product on their own great.
Re:Who buys this stuff? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who do you think taught the last couple generations? Perhaps these "well educated youth" suffer from a bit of hubris and decided they knew better than everyone else so they introduced new teaching methods which they thought would be better and those methods have failed. Nah, educated people would never claim that they have a new solution then admit a failure of their own making when it doesn't work out, lets just immediately jump to a nationwide conspiracy. Who's fault is it this week, the Free Masons or the Illuminati?
Re:Who buys this stuff? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fat, dumb and happy is okay; but fat, dumb and afraid works, too.
Re:When will people learn? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Here's how to stop it... (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember.... (Score:3, Insightful)
As someone else said, you can complain to the people who buy the ad space, but like cattle, that's likely to be just as effective. Therefore, the only thing you *can* do is fight, with alternative browsers, adware removal tools, good browsing habits, and by warning the rest of the, ahem, herd.
If we make the product unsavory, we can run the slaughterhouses out of business!
Re:Here's how to stop it... (Score:3, Insightful)
and become unremovable. Apart from not giving root access does Linux
have any mechanisms for users to avoid this pitfall. This type of
addware could in the future be installed and run in user directories.
BSD can be configured to only run applications installed in $PATH
can Linux do similar, could Linux stop it if targeted?
Re:A linux user wants to know (Score:4, Insightful)
are you high? You condescending elitest asshole. News flash *EVERYONE* who is not a knowledgable computer user gets spyware. It doesnt matter where you go or what you do, all it takes is one misclick and BAM. owned. Calling people who get spyware stupid is like calling people who get sick because they went to the mall stupid. IT HAPPENS. How dare you take the side of spyware companies and spammers. You can't honestly say youve never gotten any spyware, no family members or friends have gotten spyware, and that your some kind of a master for running linux. OOO yeah your so fucking special arent you. God damn it people like you need to be punched in the face. Soft spot for scammers indicates to me that you probably are a scammer. And i hate spammers and scammers so much it boils my blood... They have no honour.
Sort of like when i download a file from sourceforge?
Translation: I think im smart and thats why i dont get laid
god damn spyware apologists...
* awaits -1 troll* i dont care because it had to be said.