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Adware Spreads Through Myspace 209

Posted by timothy from the so-doesn't-that-make-it-really-ourspace? dept.
Sandbagger writes "Here's an interesting problem for MySpace — groups of websites that entice MySpace users into placing videos onto their profile pages (under the guise of 'free content'), without disclosing a key piece of information that might make them think twice. When someone visits one of these profiles carrying the video, a DRM acquisition box pops up and attempts to install Zango adware. In all likelihood, the profile owners don't even know these videos are doing this to their visitors. The end result is an Adware affiliate effectively removing himself from the distribution chain and letting kids promote these videos instead, in a strange example of viral marketing gone wrong."
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Adware Spreads Through Myspace More

Adware Spreads Through Myspace

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @09:58PM (#15695365)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Is that a rhetorical question? (Score:5, Funny)

      by trickonion ( 943942 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @10:02PM (#15695381) Homepage
      this is too much like an AIDS outbreak in a sex offender prison I can't be sad for this

    • Re:Is that a rhetorical question? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Pancake Bandit ( 987571 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @10:06PM (#15695403)
      Viral marketing is a relatively harmless marketing strategy that takes advantage of "word of mouth", using its audience to reach new audience. Consider the popular website homestarrunner.com, which has never used marketing but instead relied on its visitors to encourage others to visit. "Viral" comes from the idea that one person sees it, and shows it to several friends, who show it to several friends. This can reach a much wider audience than conventional marketing methods and cuts down on marketing costs.

      • All good marketing is viral (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Zeinfeld ( 263942 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @10:54PM (#15695605) Homepage
        Viral marketting is just a dotbomb buzzword. The idea behind it predates the Internet, predates print in fact. This is not viral marketting, its simply a conduit for malware.

        The same problem appeared on blogger a year back. I don't know if they ever got the problem under control (I learned to stop using the next blog button), but it was a real pain.

        There are two problems here, first MySpace should get a clue and eradicate the infestations. Second IE should have taken steps against forced downloads back in 1998 when it was only realplayer and flash that kept asking if they could install fifty times a day. At least that was only a consequence of the pages having the active content rather than a deliberate attack to put the malware on the machine.

        The reason I use Windows is precisely because you don't notice this sort of stuff if you spend your time using Firefox. I want to know the next attack while it is going on.

        As an absolute rule it should never be possible for active content running in a user application to crap on the operating system internals. It should never be possible for any program to install itself in a way that is intended to prevent removal.

        Windows is trying to introduce this separation but running a Windows box without access to administrator or super user privs is pretty miserable. And to an attacker super user is administrator in any case.

        • MySpace allows FAR TOO MUCH variety in the types of content it allows, and is FAR TOO LAX in the way it allows most user actions to be performed. First, allowing any user to post virtually any type of file is a recipe for disaster. It works great for other sites that want to capitalize (for example, sites that want to post videos on myspace [vobbo.com], but not so great when that content is something you don't want to see. They don't filter content well (regular expressions to remove things like the '#' character, for
          • agreed - i have hit several profiles on myspace recently that 'claim' to be one thing (a band site, whatever) and end up doing who-knows-what and end up sending you off to some other site, for whatever reason...disabling javascript when visiting the site is almost required and definitely recommended...

            unfortunately the site is WAAAY to popular for it's own good now, and the maintainers are way over their heads as far as being able to handle these 'outbreaks' - if they even care in the first place.
        • On the bright side, people who use MySpace are dense enough to buy a Vista-enabled PC when it comes because "It's got see-through windows!". Vista (From what I've seen in the betas/ctps) has a fairly secure default user. The problem is self-healing, providing MSFT don't slacken the security layer before release.
        • "Viral marketting is just a dotbomb buzzword. The idea behind it predates the Internet, predates print in fact. This is not viral marketting, its simply a conduit for malware."

          Bzzzt! Wrong! Viral marketing refers to any marketing tactic that is spread by word of mouth from person to person (hence the "viral"). Yes, the tactics had begun to emerge pre-internet, however the advertising industry (which I work in) didn't officially recognize these tactics as its own form of marketing strategy until recently.

    • Re:Is that a rhetorical question? (Score:4, Funny)

      by mcpkaaos ( 449561 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @10:11PM (#15695421)
      Let's shorten that up a bit:

      Marketing is like rape to sex.

      Or:

      Marketing is always wrong.

      Has a nice ring to it, that last one. :)
    • I mean, common, evil... everybody's doing it!

      Here we can see a fine example of the tragedy of the commons.
       

  • On that note... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HaloZero ( 610207 ) <protodeka@@@gmail...com> on Monday July 10, 2006 @10:03PM (#15695387) Homepage
    Upon refreshing the main page, I found a slide-out Microsoft flash ad. That thing was annoying as hell, and it keeps coming up.

    On Adware and Myspace: it was a pandemic waiting to happen. One of those nasty traits of a large populus, is that when something becomes sufficiently commonplace and comfortable, it becomes an easy target. It's my understanding that myspace is riddled with holes, bugs, etc. That being said, it's only a matter of time until those are found, and exploited.

    Though I understand it doesn't end with Myspace, as the attack used is not explicitly limited to that social networking service; it simply is the vehicle for the delivery, and a prime candidate with a vulnerable userbase.

    Unrelatedly, I heard a random statistic that said that some asinine percentage of the net's streaming video traffic was due to Myspace. I brushed it off, as, well, that's a sortof silly thing to take to heart, but I wonder if there's any truth to it.
    • I went to my campus' computer lab to type up a paper before class (yeah, I wait until the last minute) and, of course, every computer was in use. I kid you not, 90% of the people using one of the computers was on a myspace page. To many younger internet users, it's become an important part of their social life.
    • A myspace epidemic? It's already happened. [slashdot.org] We should have realized by now.

      • Re:On that note... (Score:3, Informative)

        by narfbot ( 515956 )
        Oh, BTW, if you read that, you'll find that it didn't even require a myspace site bug. It was just IE badly interpreting a page. The key is the large homogenious mass of people and myspace gave it that.

    • It's my understanding that myspace is riddled with holes, bugs, etc.

      I guess the fact that this has nothing to do with MySpace and is a problem with the design of Windows Media DRM escaped you? MySpace is being targetted because it's the culture there to put free videos of stuff you like on your profile page. There's actually nothing MySpace can do to stop this as far as I can see as the "problem" is simply that they make it easy for people to publish videos they like using Windows Media Player. Short of b

  • A real reason to block the site (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Joe The Dragon ( 967727 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @10:05PM (#15695395)
    Now sysadmins can block this and say that it has adware / spyware and we can't let are users go there.
    • This could happen to any place that allows uploaded video, and probably will happen before too long.
      • True, but it has happened to Myspace. You can't just go trivially blocking websites, unless you're overly anal about internet access, as I'm sure is the case in many High schools and lower. Of course, if this is the case, chances are it's blocked already.

  • Technical details? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by someone300 ( 891284 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @10:06PM (#15695399)
    This "article" (i.e. blog post) doesn't even mention what browser(s) this affects or how it works. What program is at fault here.. wmplayer? Or is this little dialog box *after* pressing yes to some shady ActiveX thing.

  • As opposed to... (Score:5, Funny)

    by StikyPad ( 445176 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @10:06PM (#15695400) Homepage
    in a strange example of viral marketing gone wrong.

    Strange because things referred to as "viral" so rarely go wrong.

  • Think twice? (Score:5, Funny)

    by MoxFulder ( 159829 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @10:08PM (#15695413) Homepage
    ... entice MySpace users ... without disclosing a key piece of information that might make them think twice.
    These are MySpace users we're talking about. Good luck even getting 'em to think ONCE.

  • With all the clutter on there already... (Score:5, Funny)

    by thePfhitz ( 446594 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @10:12PM (#15695426)
    With all the clutter on there already, how did anybody notice in the first place??
    • You know, I think it was more along the lines of the tech-savvy people noticing...then thinking "hey! if I don't do/say anything this could very well bring an end to the MySpace era while simultaneously screwing up the computers of the people who put up those epilepsy inducing backgrounds and widgets that are more of an eye-sore than the early Geocities days. 2 birds with 1 stone!"

  • in a strange example of viral marketing gone wrong

    I'd hate this practice too, if it affected me, but why is it any more wrong, than any other children-targeted marketing (like advertising action-figures in between cartoons)?

    • (like advertising action-figures in between cartoons)

      The cartoon is the ad. The "ad" of which you speak is merely the phone number (to get mommy) to call, or the store to go to. Were you asleep in the meeting?
    • I'd hate this practice too, if it affected me, but why is it any more wrong, than any other children-targeted marketing (like advertising action-figures in between cartoons)?

      Because the advertising you see on the TV won't embed itself within the TV without your knowledge and pop up ad after ad over the top of the show you're trying to watch (although TV execs would if they could...).

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @10:30PM (#15695502)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:America really is growing daft (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @11:39PM (#15695737) Homepage Journal
      "People look at me like I'm a Nazi because I seriously don't think most Americans should be enfranchised. Let's face an ugly truth. Our founding fathers were right: most people are unfit to vote."

      The reason people look at you like you're a Nazi is because once you start with "these people aren't fit to vote, I know what's best for them", then you start feeling entitled to make other decisions for them, such as what kinds of jobs they can hold, where they can live, and whether they are allowed to reproduce. The 'slippery slope' card is one that's too often use where it's not warranted, but this is a place where it's obviously warranted, by historical precedent.

      Let me say this as clearly as I can: if you think you know better than me as to what's right in my life, fuck you. You have no place making decisions for me, or anyone else. Society really goes to hell, as in labor camps and mass exterminations, when we let right-wing ideologies like yours come into power. We've fought long and hard to get where we are today, and it makes me sick to hear you say that just because you don't like myspace. It's a friggin' website, for crying out loud!

      Futhermore, the founding fathers didn't say that most people are unfit to vote. They specfically left out particular groups based on race, ethnicity and gender -- women, blacks, Indians, etc. They did not say that most people are unfit to vote. I would bet that you know, or at least know of, women and blacks that are certainly fit to vote by your standards, just as there are women and blacks that are unfit to vote by your standards. The problem comes when someone starts thinking their standards are the ones we should use to disenfranchise voters.

      • Re:America really is growing daft (Score:5, Funny)

        by Ohreally_factor ( 593551 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2006 @12:12AM (#15695835) Journal
        "People look at me like I'm a Nazi because I seriously don't think most Americans should be enfranchised. Let's face an ugly truth. Our founding fathers were right: most people are unfit to vote."

        The reason people look at you like you're a Nazi is because once you start with . . . .


        It could also be the the little toothbrush mustache and the swastika armband.
      • Let me say this as clearly as I can: if you think you know better than me as to what's right in my life, fuck you.

        Too bad that doesn't seem to be doing any good with regards to getting rid of idiot Congresscritters that don't know what their constituents want. Or just don't care.

      • Society really goes to hell, as in labor camps and mass exterminations, when we let right-wing ideologies like yours come into power.

        First, the concept you're looking for is "authoritarian", not "right-wing". You'll find that authoritarians come in both left-wing and right-wing varieties. The two camps never agree on the problems that need to be solved, but they always agree on the solution -- more power for them, less power for you.

        Second, YHBT YHL HAND.

      • Re:America really is growing daft (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Firehed ( 942385 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2006 @12:40AM (#15695945) Homepage
        Fair enough, though I largely agree with the grandparent poster. I'm very much against people thinking that they know how I should run my life, as you seem to be. But as the GP said, for every voter that's aware of the issues, there's five more who just vote like sheep, be it their political party (having no awareness of the issues or their candidate's stance on them), their friends, or - notably worse - how the candidate *looks*.

        The good news is that, to some degree, the problem is self-correcting. Those "unfit" to vote are the type that keep well away from the ballot boxes, since they're all too busy picking the next American Idol. In fact up to quite recently (quite possibly the GP post), I was trying to figure out why we didn't implement some sort of internet- or phone-based voting system. Then it hit me - the people who are too fucking lazy to either go down to the voting booths or get an absentee ballot if they can't make it are the exact type of people who will, without any question, vote like sheep. You can bet your ass that shows like American Idol, Big Brother and other call-in-/text-in-/log-in-to-vote shows wouldn't have made it to the second episode if their voters had to head to the town hall or other voting emporium to vote.

        The counterpoint to that being that while you tend to keep the dumb sheep away from the ballots, those who have some hardcore feelings about a hot-topic issue DO flock to the polls to get something passed/rejected or someone voted in. Naturally, if you can't be bothered to vote then you've got no excuse when you're not happy with the outcome, but you'll still end up with some vastly unpopular things passed when people don't feel strongly enough to get out there.

        The biggest problem is really that voting is just a popularity contest. In the last ten years or so, I've seen one candidate - ONE - who's campaign was "here's my stance on these issues, vote accordingly". Everything else has been "I'm great for pointless reasons x, y, and z" or "the other guy sucks for irrelavent reasons u, v, and w." How completely worthless. It would be one thing if you didn't agree with any of the candidates up for election, but it's something else when you're forced to go in blind because their multimillion dollar campaigning told you absolutely nothing.

      • The reason people look at you like you're a Nazi is because once you start with "these people aren't fit to vote, I know what's best for them", then you start feeling entitled to make other decisions for them, such as what kinds of jobs they can hold, where they can live, and whether they are allowed to reproduce. The 'slippery slope' card is one that's too often use where it's not warranted, but this is a place where it's obviously warranted, by historical precedent.

        So what if he said some people aren't fi

      • Futhermore, the founding fathers didn't say that most people are unfit to vote.

        I admit it has been quite some time since I studied American history in any depth, but I do think there's something to saying they did; some of them, at least. My recollection is that was the reason they created the whole electoral college, which, at the time, was under NO obligation to vote for the person their state (or whatever) voted for. I think the founders hoped that some day everybody would be fit to vote--and who kn

      • > the founding fathers didn't say that most people are unfit to vote

        They didn't all think alike. A sizable camp, notably Hamilton, believed that universal suffrage would lead to mob rule because the common people would just get carried away with fads and hysteria. Jefferson championed the other view.

        An example of the compromises they came up with: state legislatures used to be the ones who elected Senators, in the hopes of providing a layer of review and deliberation between the partially untrusted peopl
      • They also left out people under 21 and people who didn't own property. So let's see:

        White.
        Male.
        21.
        Own Property (ie white-collar or aristocracy.)

        Sounds pretty limiting to me. And of course, there was that whole electoral college - that idea wasn't just the popular vote translated to faithful elector formality that it is today. The Founding Fathers expected the electors to be lifelong appointments by states, and that those electors would all sit around in their smoking rooms and rich plantations and pick out
    • >As soon as I saw one of these popups, I'd demand that they take the videos off and would file a criminal complaint with the police against the spyware vendor.

      Your local police will get awfully busy if someone calls them every time there's a popup for a "search assistant". Better in this case to handle your own security online with software and policies.

      >Parents and teens that by now can't handle their own security online are generally irresponsible people

      Generally, perhaps, but I acknowledge exceptio
    • Clueless people are easy to rule. Pol Pot knew it. He took it to the extreme, so today the creed is: Gullible people are just as easy to rule, but they can still be productive.

      And that's where we are today. Education today is not geared towards "preparing you for life". It is geared towards making you a good citizen. You're supposed to do your job, but be unfit to do anything else. You're not supposed to make a "qualified" decision, actually it is discouraged in every way. It helps two parties: First, your
    • There is a VERY VERY simple solution...that may not work forever, but will at least get us on the right track. To vote...you go into the poll booth...and pass the citizenship test...then you are allowed to cast your vote. Go look at the statistics concerning the number of americans that cannot pass the test that is required of foreigners to become citizens. Pretty scary....and a little sad considering most of it is below high school level stuff.
    • >It's pretty clear that parents today aren't doing their
      >jobs and policing their kids' MySpace accounts in many
      >ways.

      But the previous chapter of the Slashdot Parenting Manual says that if I don't give my kids private unfettered broadband access and let them play racy games, then I'm a Nazi.

      So which is it? I'm supposed to monitor them every second*, or give them complete freedom? ;)

      * and if I don't monitor them every second, then everything's my own fault - no complaining to Nick Jr. if Dora suddenl
  • this just smacks of 'not controlled here' syndrome. people want to link other people's stuff, and they do, but the content (and bandwidth!) owners don't guarantee that what they link when they create thier page is what is going to remain there.

    basically, anchor refer tags do not always point to what they are supposed to. myspace is bringing back to the forefront lots of little details/problems from the late nineties from 'user' made websites, mostly geocities. it is reminiscent of when someone would like to

  • Holy smokes (Score:3, Informative)

    by sloths ( 909607 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @10:38PM (#15695537)
    My stepbrother installed that Zango stuff on my computer. I uninstalled it, and the next day I found it installed again. So I used the hosts file to redirect zango.com to zombo.com

    Problem solved.

  • Myspace (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bostonsoxfan ( 865285 )
    This is darwinism. If we stop putting out patches and programs to kill adware/spyware only the strong will survive. Granted reformatting your computer isn't that difficult still it takes them off the internet. People with common sense will realize that I shouldn't download something that just pops up. Somebody should write a pamphlet about it and distribute it with new computers. Honestly you have to be a fool to not use google video for your myspace videos. They have the best servers and maybe not the grea

  •   Let me put in a shout for TreasureTrooper - no adware, but mobs of dorks are spamming YouTube video comment streams on their behalf ... viral marketing at that level needs to be excised just like any other unnatural growth.
  • I know that one can build a gateway box to scan and remove viruses from internet traffic before it hits the lan, but can the same thing be done with spyware thus making it a little bit safer to not block myspace and other such sites that are reaching levels of popularity that make them impossible to block in some enviornments with office politics pressure and all?

  • MySpace is a lost cause (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zaphod2016 ( 971897 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @10:59PM (#15695620) Homepage
    When News Corp bought MySpace back in '05 [bbc.co.uk] I expected membership would begin to drop like a stone, as the "anti-establishment", Bush-hating, Indie-music loving, media-toppling population of MySpacers fled on to "the next big thing".

    Sure enough, dozens of "Web 2.0" MySpace clones appeared, offering better features and the same "fight for the little guy" mentality that MySpace had become famous for. I expected those MySpacers would be off in no time. Being that I'm a tad too old (26) for those "wacky kids", I diverted my attention and awaited the sound bite that "the MySpace phenomena was over".

    A year later, I'm still waiting. Meanwhile, the juaggurnaut that is MySpace continues to grow like WalMart on crack, and other News Corp properties (FX, Fox, Fox News) have jumped on the bandwagon. Call me naive, but I expected the "corporate parent" to stay well hidden from MySpace for fear of losing their main demo (Q: what are you rebelling against? A: what do you got?). Instead the opposite has happened: MySpace and fox passed the "sell out" threshold months ago, and millions more have poured onto MySpace as a result (I find myself meeting people well into their 30's and 40's with freaking MySpace accounts these days!).

    So, the simple answer here in regards to the recent scam-ware MySpace epidemic is: duh. My opinion of those "60 million" antidisetablishmentarianist (take THAT grammar nazis) hit rock bottom awhile ago.

    So why do I get so fired up about a website I never used in the first place? Because I give people too much credit, that's why. I was first exposed to MySpace by searching technorati and ending up in "the blogs". Believe it or not, not ALL MySpacers are completely illiterate retards. A few made excellent points regarding DRM, media and political collusions, and the evils of Fox News. But when all of this "dissent" can be bought up by "the enemy" in 5 minutes, and NO ONE EVEN CARES, it simply blows my mind.

    But then I admit to myself that I still use Google, and therefore, am an ugly stinking hypocrite according to my own psuedo-morality.

    In the immortal words of Homer Simpson: D'oh.
    • Of course, everything is doomed, eventually*.

      * Insert your value for eventually to see if doomed applies to you.

    • Points for the Brando quote.
    • Just wait... Apathy 2.0 is coming out real soon.

    • Re:MySpace is a lost cause (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      My opinion of those "60 million" antidisetablishmentarianist (take THAT grammar nazis) hit rock bottom awhile ago.


      antidisestablishmentarianists

      you: 0
      grammar nazis: 1
    • A year later, I'm still waiting. Meanwhile, the juaggurnaut that is MySpace continues to grow like WalMart on crack, and other News Corp properties (FX, Fox, Fox News) have jumped on the bandwagon. Call me naive, but I expected the "corporate parent" to stay well hidden from MySpace for fear of losing their main demo (Q: what are you rebelling against? A: what do you got?). Instead the opposite has happened: MySpace and fox passed the "sell out" threshold months ago, and millions more have poured onto MySpa
      • There are many, many ways to keep in contact with F-R-I-E-N-D-S which do not require one of the largest media conglomerates in the world. Like I already said, I understand you don't care, I understand you don't see a threat. That's exactly why I'm so nervous about it.
        • You see MySpace as a threat? I didn't read that in your parent post. Care to elaborate?

          • You see MySpace as a threat? I didn't read that in your parent post. Care to elaborate?

            Well, since you asked so nicely, sure. Ok everyone, tinfoil hats on...

            Turn on your TV. If you're like me, you probably have well over 100 channels available to you. As such, you would probably mock any talk of "conspiracy" as absolutely silly; after all, who could control all those channels? But take a closer look. How many of those channels are owned by News Corp [wikipedia.org], Warner Bros [wikipedia.org], Disney [wikipedia.org] or Viacom [wikipedia.org]? Why, almost all of t

            • Ok, I see where you're coming from, and I agree that the mega media corporations are a problem. I'd rather have a choice between lots of different options than having to rely on the main-stream stuff of the megacorps. I also agree that it is very bad that so many news outlets are controlled by the same megacorps, a power that is already abused.

              But I don't see the big problem with MySpace, i.e. with MySpace being a threat. Of course, I'd rather like it to be independant and not controlled by a big media corp

  • hmmm... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Connie_Lingus ( 317691 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @11:00PM (#15695626) Homepage
    ...and I thought that myspace was itself a virus...can a virus infect a virus?

    • Re:hmmm... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      can a virus infect a virus?

      Q. Why won't the AIDS virus infect Scientologists?
      A. Professional courtesy.

  • Someone has obviously written this article as a veiled attack on MySpace. I don't really have an opinion on MySpace, but the fact is, ANYONE can post an <embed> tag to show a video on their profile.

    The person (author of the article?) got a video link to a video from Zango which was DRM'd. The DRM is what makes your Windows Media Player popup that window. The file's DRM tells the Windows Media Player what URL to pull up. Anyways, all this person did was post a DRM'd video.

    What a stupid article.

  • Gone Wrong, Indeed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @11:26PM (#15695696) Homepage Journal
    "Viral marketing gone wrong?" Sounds like it's doing exactly what it was designed and intended to do.

    Schwab

    • "Viral marketing gone wrong?" Sounds like it's doing exactly what it was designed and intended to do.

      I believe that "wrong" is intended in a moral sense, not a functional sense. English is such a fuzzy language....

  • and we do not condone vigilantie justice, like hunting these bastards down and ripping their legs off and beating them with them ... why?

  • wmplayer alternatives? (Score:3, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @11:47PM (#15695764)
    I've been using vlc, but it's plugin crashes firefox pretty consistently. So what else can you use (that isn't just a front end to the same codecs wmplayer uses)?
  • How timesly. TechCrunch just reviewed this:
    http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/10/zango-brings- adware-to-myspace/ [techcrunch.com]

  • MySpace are no strangers to the Spyware business (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TehBeer ( 860440 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2006 @12:33AM (#15695915)
    Info is below, and besides, doesn't this recent US patent, kind of fit MySpace?
    http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-b ool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=7,069,308. PN.&OS=PN/7,069,308&RS=PN/7,069,308 [uspto.gov]

    It sure sounds alot like it's describing much of what myspace is, and myspace is a "deleware company" in the US and subject to US laws.

    As for their kind fondness of spyware, see the citations below for more info.
    Birds of a feather they say.

    http://www.intermixedup.com/ [intermixedup.com]

    "Intermix Management and other Insiders sold approximately $25 million of Intermix stock in full knowledge that the New York State Attorney General (NY-AG), Eliot Spitzer, would soon file a lawsuit against the company for
    certain adware promotion activity. Management and Insiders sold vast quantities of stock before disclosing this critical information appropriately to the rest of the marketplace. "

    http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Bloggers_investigate_s ocial_networking_websites [wikinews.org]

    "Actually, MySpace had simply shut down and become ResponseBase-- as evidenced by the "Freebies" newsletter above. ResponseBase also used a list of 8 million e-mail addresses purchased from Xdrive for their newsletters. In 2002, ResponseBase was booted from their ISP as an illicit spam organization-- with Tom Anderson himself listed as their billing contact. And later still, ResponseBase would be renamed to MySpace."

    "Intermix Media itself has a tangled history. In 2004, Intermix (then operating as eUniverse) was named as a spammer organization on USENET. It purchased ResponseBase, shut down its operations, and reformed it as MySpace. On April 28, 2005, Intermix was sued by the State of New York for installing malicious spyware over the Internet. According to their press release:"

  • It's not Myspace. It's Microsoft. Why, for whatever reason, should Windows Media Player download and start an executable file from an unknown party?

    Here's what Microsoft put in Media Player 10. See Windows Media Digital Rights Management (security) [microsoft.com]. (Not your security; the content owner's security.) To play a packaged digital media file, the consumer must first acquire a license key to unlock the file. The process of acquiring a license begins automatically when the consumer attempts to acquire the pa

  • Nowadays I only take care of my and my fiancee's computer, and we're both smart enough to avoid these kinds of internet social diseases.

    That being said, are there ways without special software to lock down a windows xp machine so your kid or niece or whoever couldn't inflict this kind of damage on it?

    I'm really just curious, this isn't a pressing issue for me.
  • "a strange example of viral marketing gone wrong"

    Viral marketing will never "go right" for anyone except the ass-sucking, bottom-feeding marketers who come up with it. Happy to help.

  • Cross Posting on Myspace.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2006 @09:37AM (#15697430) Homepage
    I have a photo site. I notice a lot of hits from xanga and myspace for some of my photos. Kids are using them as backgrounds.. I don't really care and have the bandwidth. Someone at work noted that if I was really annoyed I could change those users background to "another" picture.....

    Anytime you cross post to content on another server you run the risk of a "switch" at anytime.

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