Slashdot Mirror
FTC Shuts Down 'Pop-Up Trapping' Sites
Masem writes: "The FTC today ordered the shutdown of 5,500 sites owned by John Zuccarini, all of them the so-called 'typo' sites that common mis-entered URLs for popular sites (such as Annakurnikova.com); when the user visits these sites, their back button behavior in most popular browsers is modified as to open multiple pop-ups featuring ads for adult entertainment and gambling sites when pressed, and uses other technology to basically 'trap' the browser until the entire application has to be closed. While some sites are still operating, the FTC is going to take this matter to court, which may decide exactly how much control a web site can take over the end browser using JavaScript and ActiveX. CNet has the full story." Le Marteau contributes a link to the same story at the Washington Post.
I can know go back to browsing porn at work without the fear of getting caught.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
What gets me is not that someone registered those names and cybersquatted (I'm all for that), but that this kind of annoyance (popup Spam) is actually clicked through and these Casinos, fake/genuine Viagra, etc. sites make any money at all.
Are you the one clicking on them?
Blah blah blah... "IE sucks cuz I can turn off popups in Moz..."
And I thought X-10 was bad!
This type of advertising only frustrates users and creates animosity between advertiser and potential customer. This is an obvious and sometimes extreme nuisance, having to shut down your broweser at times!
Alienating your audience is not a good business practice.
I like fire ants. They are very spicy!
Hey, give the guy a break, he's trying. He closes down most of his sites, but whenever he hits the "back" button they all start up again. Those damn javascript-based admin tools...
Hope this will include the "Neverending popup", where you point to a site that popups a copy of itself, which popups a copy of itself, which popups a copy of itself...
I think the troll link "comp-u-geek.com" (DON'T GO THERE!) does that...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
er, I mean Zuccarini.
.. no scratch that, there's a night and day difference between registering typo sites and displaying a pile of non-porn ads, and registering those sites and trapping the user in a net where they can't get out and displaying pornography to them for the sole intent of making a buck. especially when said users could be children or people who find pornography offensive.
But seriously. There's a fine line between
I've seen a few sites who grab a typo site and just use it to promote their own (not indecent) site, but also provide a link on their site to the site that "you might have wanted" instead. I think that's fair enough, no big harm there, but to intentionally trap people. Wow. I never thought I'd be praising government intervention on the internet...
If God gave us curiosity
One thing that surprised me is that this slime ball has been sued for this before and lost 57 cases tied to 200 domain names and been fined $800,000 to $1,000,000. And he's still doing it. The only reason he would still be doing this is if it is profitable, above and beyond court costs and fines.
Who is falling for all this and patronizing the sites that trap you like this?
Even though I'm sure we all had good intentions (if not complete thoughlessness) when all these cool features were added to JavaScript. But really, isn't it time that this gets fixed at the Browser end? I cannot think of *any* good reason for browsers to allow JavaScript to modify how buttons like Back and Close opperate without confirmation by the user. (it would also be trivial to apply a reasonable limit, like say 3, to pop-up windows). Microsoft and Netscape should both be *really* embarrassed that this issue is being addressed by the governent and potential legislation before they've even had a chance to suggest ways of fixing the situation.
Namely, You are connecting to THEIR machine.
Mail server administrators block spam because they are using their resources, why can't these people claim the same? After all, you're using THEIR resources, shouldnt they have the right to send any data on a connection that YOU initiated? (Though I realize you might not have intentionally made that connection; they can be sneaky, but the point remains.)
I just don't like regulation, If it's bad and wrong, it's the clients job to work with the received data. But noone's blaming Microsoft, Netscape, Mozilla, or Konq (and you really can't blame the last 2, they're implementing things to take care of this junk).
Target a solution, rather than the cause and punishment.
That's just my view.
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
This is a great thing. The FTC protects people from fraud and other illegal business practices. That is what they are doing in this instance. The FCC regulates the airwaves, television, and so forth.
The government isn't "getting involved in the internet" in any new creative way. They are just protecting consumers (us) from fraudulent illegal business practices
Next time get the FCC FTC thing correct before you post, it completely changes the context of the article.
looking for a bug in some Javascript (we maintain
our own web browser), and after delving down
through the deliberately obfuscated javascript
code, it became obvious what it was trying to do:
it went through all links in the document, attaching
a javascript "front-end" to each link that did an http GET request
informing the remote site what had been clicked on,
before actually following the link. the technique
used seemed fairly dodgy (the request was purporting
to be for a non-displayed image), but it's interesting
to see what a fairly reputable site is prepared
to do in order to get as much information off you as possible (without your knowledge).
how reasonable is that? i don't like it, but is that sort
of subterfuge the kind of thing we'd like to stop too?
[PS. apologies if this appears twice - it looked like
had rejected the previous ones; and then the whole
server seemed to crash: what was going on there then?]
Yes, but hacking your client to filter it is a DMCA violation.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
This topic should clarify a lot of the hypocrisy among the /. crowd; What's *your* opinion on this issue? And how does that opinion compare to, say, what you would feel about the court shutting down your anti-Microsoft site?
Got Rhinos?
The site www.annakurnikova.com is running Apache/1.3.6 - 448 user - IKM 11211999 (Unix) on FreeBSD.
They go on to say the netblock he is using belongs to CWIE LLC.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Fortunately, what's happened isn't that the government has decided to regulate javascript, the FTC is just making a reasonable application of existing laws against deceptive business practices. What we're seeing here is legal action against deceptive practices. We are not seeing action to outlaw the use of a particular technology, or any restriction on your right to write and distribute any sort of javascript tool that you like. What we are seeing is a crackdown on a business practice that was already unethical and illegal.
Be very wary of falling into the trap of thinking that adding 'and do it with a computer' to the end of some already common thing makes it new and different. That's what Amazon did (We're going to keep our customers address and credit card number in a rolodex 'and we do it with a computer') and we all hate them for it.
Also be wary of falling into the trap of thinking that because the Internet is international no one can exert any authority over it. While it is certianly true that the US FTC has little to no authority over what foriegn companies do with offshore servers, there is still a responsiblity to put a stop to illegal actions when you are able to do so.
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
A spam message wastes some of my bandwidth and a few seconds of my time. A "hydra" pop-up ad wastes some of my bandwidth and more than a few seconds of my time. The fact that I posted my e-mail address on my web site does not give you permission to use my resources to market to me. Clicking a link at a TGP (list of porn galleries) must imply a little more consent, because I obviously put up with banner ads, but I don't see why it should imply any more consent than "you may display things in this browser window". Not "you may open new browser windows or otherwise make it difficult for me to leave your site".
We deal with spam by first by black-holing rogue networks, then through government regulation, and perhaps occasionally through international pressure. Why are we skipping straight to government regulation for pop-up ads, rather than trying the black-hole approach first?
The shareholder is always right.
When you backclick or close, the next site(s) will attempt to pop up, but no further code will be loaded and hence the hell will eventually end.
I always click "work offline" before trying to exit or back out of any of these questionable sites now BEFORE the cascading crap starts...
Okay - I'll probally get flammed for this. But if you are using Internet Explorer you can start up IE with the -new command and have each browser open in a seperate process. That way, your main browser won't lock up or be forced to 'end task' if your popup windows get out of control.
People who are rabidly anti-filtering forget that for some purposes it is useful. Alcohol, cigarettes, guns, porn - all things that an age-filter is useful for. I can't watch my son every moment he's online. This prevents inadvertent finger presses more than deliberate ones, at least until they get to a certain age. When my son gets to that age, he and I'll talk.
-- United States Supreme Court, Rowan vs. U.S. Post Office, 1970
how to invest, a novice's guide
They don't like what a piece of code does, so they ban it.
I can't believe people are supporting moves to dictate what you are or are not allowed to express in a piece of code.
This functionality is, i'm sure, in the W3C standard for Javascript, so criminilizing this is pretty stupid.
Now, if your browser is engineered so poorly that it allows you no control over this behaviour - i.e. a site author is free to mess up your web browsing experience, shouldn't you ask the manufacturer of that browser to do something about it?
Don't restrict this guy from publishing anything he wants to on the web. The control over whether to view that content should be in the user's hands.
I know that M$ etc. would love to turn the web into a heavily regulated, TV-like environment where most content is approved and published by a few mega-corps, with government regulations on what is or is not acceptable, but that idea makes me sick to the stomach.
i mean, how hard would it be to have a preference setting for 'ask me before allowing javascript to open a new window'? Give the user a choice, don't make it a crime to write this type of application (for which there are many perfectly legitimate uses)
Making rules for what types of applications you may or may not publish on the web is surely a free speech issue.
'Sorry, window.open() is now a federal crime.' doesn't cut it with me.
The problem is with the tools that web browsers expose to site developers. The site developers should be free to put any tags they like up on the web.
This is why web browsers are free to ignore markup they do not support.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long