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Distastful Advertising Continues: "Gatoring"
iforgotmyfirstlogon sent us a link to an article on CNet about
Gatoring, a fabulous new advertising technique where advertising buy key words and pop up windows over competitors. The kicker is that this is a byproduct of a commonly installed activex plugin. And its only gonna get worse.
I figure it's a matter of when, not if.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
A while ago. But the only reason was because I did some testing and discovered that you can make the ancient RealPlayer 5.0 (that didn't have a lot of spam included in its user interface) work just fine with RealPlayer G2 and RealPlayer 8 streams, by simply fux0ring around with the DLLs in C:\Windoze\Program Files\Common or somewhere like that.
Basically, you take a RP5 install, do a recursive DIR or ls over the filesystem.
Then (on an expendable system, naturally, that you've replicated from your production box), you install the upgrades required to play files encoded with the newer RealMedia codecs, and do another DIR or ls.
Then you diff the results and copy any new or modified DLLs onto your production system. Presto! RealPlayer 5 with "up-to-date" codecs.
Of course, that doesn't prevent Real from including spyware/phone-home in the DLLs, nor does it prevent RealPlayer 5 from auto-nagging you every few months to upgrade.
But it's a workable solution for all those old South Park episodes I acquired in 228K .RM files (a mixture of RealPlayer 5, G2, and RealPlayer 8 codecs) format before DiVX appeared.
Which, come to think of it, is about the only use I have for RealPlayer, since I don't have cable.
At this point, the last thing you need to do is shove more ads into people's faces trying to get them to buy your product. Instead of trying to force people to buy what you make, you should be making what people want to buy.
It's all ass backwards, and in my opinion, we are seeing the beginning of the end for this type of advertising. The only way that marketing and advertising are going to succeed in the future is by giving people what they want, when they want it, not shoving their nose in it.
The pop-ups will get worse, until they are tuned out completely, like your little sister. Then the only ones left making money will be those who were smart about where they spent thier money, and actually put money into user-friendly areas. (Which is the reason for the huge surge in sponsership of sports, like it or lump it.)
This kind of crap is getting to the point where it's annoying enough that people are getting pissed off. Corporations are going to have to ask themselves if they few idiots they sucker in to buying their products through pop-ups is worth the teeming masses they alienated through annoying ads.
I know that I'll never be buying that stupid ass spy cam now, that's for sure.
As many of you might be aware, Gator also offers a so called form filler that fills your personal information into merchant forms (shipping address, credit card number and such). So once I decided to install this "thing" to try it out. Works fine. Then I wanted to look a little bit into security. They do not publish how they encrypt your sensitive data, they only claim that yourt information is encrypted and absolutely secure. Well, well, I emailed them. After 3 emails to their customer service I finally got the response that they do not publish how they do security and encryption (may I assume it is ROT-13 then!?) for SECURITY REASONS! Now I can only say, be afraid, be very afraid of the next worm ...
> This is obviously a flame, and I know I'm going to lose what meager karma points I have with this, but I'm going to say it anyways.
Those who would sacrifice their freedom of speech for karma deserve neither freedom of speech nor karma.
To pare a phrase.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Anyone remember this article from a few days ago about WinXP blocking certain device drivers because of potential flaws based on crash data? I'm SURE that could be widended to include programs and OCXs. Here's what we need to do...
- Get Microsoft to expand their block list to include software too
- Have a bunch of people "Break" the OCX so it really fouls things up
- Have these people submit the crash info to Microsoft
POOF! Microsoft's auto-update feature for XP blocks the software...Anyone know any XP core programers?
quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Juvenal
the lower you sink, the better chance you have of turning a profit.
_f
I'm guessing it's called gatoring because of the way unwanted Florida Gator fans pop up and extol the virtues of Steve Spurrier during the discussion of anything related to college football?
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
In traditional media outlets, particularly newspaper and radio, companies can specifically request or be GUARANTEED that advertisements for competing products or services will NOT appear within x-many column inches of newspaper or x-minutes of radio play.
If I were advertising my theoretical car dealership, what is the effectiveness of that ad if a SECOND companies' commercial runs right behind mine? What if they KNEW they could get that slot and intentionally undercut all my sale prices in THEIR ad? I'd cancel my ad run and refuse payment to the station, among other things.
This situation actually happened when I was working at a Northeast-Ohio computer company, when a popular area FM radio station ran OUR ad with a COMPETITOR'S ad right behind it! We actually called the competitor, said "do you know they are doing this?" upon which BOTH of us called the station manager threatening to cancel BOTH ad runs unless they were scheduled at least 3 minutes apart, per their agreement.
This has to be one of the better, shining examples of the "wild west" cowboy cavalier attitude so predominant on the internet running smack into the brick wall of common sense.
Hey, perhaps Microsoft should approach Andover, offer them four times their standard banner rates and plaster WindowsXP ads all over Slashdot.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
Some friends and I were just talking about this last night - when was the last time that you used RealPlayer?
That thing is annoying as all hell, it takes control of every filetype that it can by default, and it's almost impossible to make go away. And yet, they're still in business (the last time that I checked)...
-Chris
Linux is not an option for this man ... he has to ask questions like 'Is it okay to delete kernel32.dll?'
/vmlinuz?" Tell him "go ahead and try - the system will stop you if it's important."
You're wrong.
Linux is the only option for this man. Set up the system with the apps he needs, and let him be.
Show him how to log on (as a normal user), and how to start programs.
Then when he asks "Is is OK to delete
And then rejoice at the fact that you'll never have to go back there to remove Melissa, or ILoveYou, or SirCam.
The funniest part in the story was when the Gator.com executive was quoted as saying the Gator is "easily removable via the Add/Remove Programs dialogue". When I downloaded several programs containing Gator, it didn't install immediately. Instead, it would just sit invisble in the background and wait like an hour. If you tried to delete its installer in this time period it would be locked by the OS. THe only way to delete it before it installed on those programs (which I am POSITIVE did not give the option to install without Gator) was to kill the program and then delete the file. Anyone else see this delay tactic? I think it is meant to make Gator just "show up" on the computer later to prevent the user from just immediately deleting it without "trying" it.
Pack it up, go home. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm seriously considering dumping most of my computer stuff (and it's a literal ton) and opening some meatspace business.
Maybe I'm a dreamer, but customer service can still get you a modest income and modest success. At 90% of the places I shop, I know at least a couple of the staff (and/or the owner) by name. And vice versa. If we had a non-chain bookstore, it would be an even higher percentage. No, none of them are millionaires, and they all work a lot. But they seem to enjoy it.
(Yeah, yeah, lots of flames coming my way. Let me take care of a few:
"It's just the man. We can keep the 'net for ourselves"
"You're a loser who is giving in"
"The internet is a wonderful medium for doing {x,y,z}"
)
Yeah. Whatever. Let's face it, assholes like this (and the ones at Kazaa, verizon, M$, etc.) have moved in and taken over with a little help from their friends in the government.
I'm beginning to wonder if Ted Kacinsky didn't have some of the right ideas.
Or at least the separatists living in the Rockies.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
- During the install process I was told that Snood came with the "coolest" new software, and that Gator would be automatically installed. No option to install without it (unlike Bearshare).
- After installation, Gator didn't immediately start up, appear in the start menu, or appear in the "add/remove programs" menu. It waited about 5-10 minutes before popping up. This prevented me from immediately uninstalling this parasitic software.
- After killing Gator, my firewall caught the "Onflow Player Installer" trying to access it's web site.
- When I was finally able to uninstall Gator, it's uninstall program warned me that "Deleting your user information will erase all your passwords account numbers and login IDs." I can imagine a novice aborting the uninstall after a warning like that. It doesn't mention that it is only referring to the data that you gave Gator.
- If this software was really useful, you'd think people would want to install it. Remember ThirdVoice, it was a tool that let users annotate web pages with their own content that was visible to other ThirdVoice users. It never acheived the market penetration it needed. There's a program that people could actually find useful, and it didn't make it. I can only imagine the sheer contempt for the user that these companies must have. To resort to such deceptive and misleading practices just to show some unwanted advertisements...
I've said it before and I'll say it again: finding new surface area for advertisements is not a creative endeavor. These people are the biggest hacks in the world, and deserve to watch Rosie O'Donnell eat BBQ ribs without a napkin.Buy Hex-Rated Stuff, fight the DMCA!
"It's one of the nuances of this medium; it's changing some of the parameters that we traditionally thought were sacrosanct," I-Traffic's Quinn said. "There's now this third party between you and a customer within the browser, and that's changed the rules. There's generally no third party between you and the TV. And a lot of people want to cry unfair."
Well, DUH. If I'm surfing to a web site, I want the content on that site. That site wants me to see their content. If somebody butts into the middle, OF COURSE I will cry unfair. Then Mr. Quinn gets all amused by it: "Ha ha, isn't it amusing. But you have to put up with it because it's a New Medium!"
The unfortunate thing is that most people don't have the technical know-how to get the tech-savvy third party to butt out.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
...is that when you uninstall it, it installs another program under a different name and icon that does the same thing gator does. It takes two uninstalls and reboots to remove it from your system, and how long will it take the average user to notice that unidentified icon among the 20 or so others. If you ask me, this self-replication and concealment is nothing more than a virus disguised as a "legitimate" program in a grey area of the law.
Recently, I was setting up an internet connection for my father-in-law, who is decidedly of a non-technical bent. Linux is not an option for this man. Hell, Windows 98 was barely an option for him. Even then he has to ask questions like 'Is it okay to delete kernel32.dll?'
At any rate, immediately after I fixed all the problems with his cheap-ass winmodem and got the whole mess to work to dial into one of the short-lived ad-based ISP's, the guy punches in URL to a website he read out of a magazine.
The *first* thing to come up is a popup add for polarized sunglasses, as sponsored by the ISP . My father in law was *amazed* and called over his fifteen year-old son (Who thinks CB-Radio is high-tech) to see the wonderous display of marketing. Between the two, they had all but forgotten the original website they were trying to find, which was buried in a stack of software-controlled popups by this time. By the time I left that evening, both my father-in-law and my brother-in-law were pleading with my wife's mother for the number to her mastercard so that they could get some of the 'incredible bargains' that were there just because they had signed up with whatever ISP.
"You're related to them, you know," I told my wife after we left.
Her only response was, "Please don't remind me."
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Get adaware. It'll get rid of that stuff. (the spyware and gatorware not windows)
I'm all for keeping the net legislation free, but heres a place where only a law can help.
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I just say no to:
I you didn't buy into all this crap that you don't need then people will not be able to take advantage of your machine.
If enough people say no, then the web pages have to cater to the masses if they want the eyeballs.
Think adversiting DoS. Even if you actively agree to do something, if you are misled (they don't tell you what's going to happen, do they?) then that's fraud (in my book anyway).
Madness takes its toll. Exact change please.
Read the article instead of rushing to get a post at the top. Gator doesn't change anyones web content. It pops up an ad - in another window - on the user's desktop.
This was all clearly outlined in the article you obviously didn't read.
It comes with Snood, too...
Or, at least it did, last time I watched someone install Snood. It's been a while. The concept was quite annoying, but at least there was some warning of the payload...
It was a real pain, too -- we cancelled the install, it installed anyway. I had to go in and remove it manually with extreme prejudice... and it had bits scattered all over the place. It's sneaky, too -- you can easily get rid of the system tray icon and the 'password saving' function. But it seems that if you don't get all the bits, the adware / spyware is still there, working just fine, and looking just like an interstitial 'pop-over' ad! No hint whatsoever that you missed part of the damn thing.
The problem is (from the perspective of a network admin in a permissive company), this kind of thing turns your users into agents of the enemy. Sure, I can block their servers at the firewall, but I'm not fond of whack-a-mole. The next time someone finds the next cool program, I have another one to find! (Aargh!)
Marketdroids who pawn this crap off on other people should be charged with violation of the Computer Trespass laws. They're running unauthorized code on your nickel, claiming you consented when you clicked on another program's license. I hate 'em, they're worse than spammers!
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
We had this discussion already, in the TopText thread.
If you are going to claim that it is against copyright law to alter something you are viewing for your personal use, then you might as well just throw out fair use altogether.
I have the right to install software on my computer which alters content i view (assuming it is legal for me to view that content in some form) in any way i see fit. I have the right to take a content work i have purchased the right to read and insert advertising, or filter out advertising, or make every word a link to the word's respective node on everything2, or make the text 3 times as big (or have the computer read the text aloud) because i have poor eyesight, or replace the CSS with my own, or run a program on the text that uses complex heuristics to censor out anything that conflicts with scientology. I have the right to do these things by hand; i have the right to have a software program do these things for me; i have the right to create a software program and sell it to others to let others have my software program do those things for them. I can't necessarily turn around and sell other people the altered content, but i have the right to alter the content for personal use. Fair use makes this quite clear, and if you try to erase the parts of fair use that say that.. well, everything falls apart. You can't logically or legally draw a line between a program which randomly inserts advertising and a program which, say, renders HTML. Because Gator does its unethical magic within the computer, it's completely legal on copyright grounds.
This may still be illegal in terms of deceptive business practices-- i don't think ANYONE installing Snooz! (or whatever the hell that lame-ass bust-a-move ripoff with the faces is called.. i don't remember. it installs gator.) is aware that they are installing it, and those that are aware they installed something called "gator" probably think. (Making matters worse, people sometimes wind up accidentally installing Gator on public computers-- last year somehow Gator got installed on every computer in the school's computer labs (the security on the NT boxes was completely worthless), and nobody knew who did it, and so lots of 9th graders who don't understand computers got confused by this Gator thing they didn't install. That's not good, although it's the school's fault, not Gator's.). However, this is WHOLLY an issue of nefariously installing software the user doesn't want by preying on user ignorance or confusion. Copyright law does not come into play here.
That being said, i haven't the foggiest idea why anyone would want to install Gator. I hate that goddamn thing.
The article does mention Ad Aware to get rid of this if you accidently let it get installed in the first place. In addition I use the Proxomitron to just get rid of those annoying pop-ups/unders/whatever completely. It's fully configurable and let's you create your own filters in a manner similar to Perl's regular expressions.
First tried the add/remove programs method, of course it couldnt get rid of the file that gator starts from, because the file was *running*.
Had to go into win2k's process list. Find the process (i believe there was more than 1) and shut them down. THEN I had to go and use add/remove programs.
Finally, i had to go into explorer and delete the remnants of it that wasnt uninstalled.
I cant imagine what id do without the process list.
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So what the heck, I click on it. They're trying to gather some information to help with their advertising. No problem, that's what these surveys are usually for. I'm merrily filling out the survey, and everything's fine, until I hit this question:
Did you notice that second item?Now I'll be wondering if the articles themselves have been bought by advertisers...
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
I personally think it's a valid strategy
It's bullshit. Do you know how many projection TVs I've seen with some station's watermark burned into the screen? I have a nice high-def projection set, and I refuse to watch any station that does this. Static images on any projector for a significant amount of time will cause burn in. Not cool.
BTW, I've never had a problem figuring out which station I'm on.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig