Slashdot Mirror
Morpheus Hijacks Browsers For Affiliate Links
An anonymous reader submits: "According to this news.com article, morpheus (aka streamcast) has begun silently installing a browser plugin on its users' machines that basically hijacks the web browser even when not running Morpheus. An afflicted browser will sense if a user is going to visit a shopping site like Yahoo! or Amazon, and secretly send them to a different site instead and then redirect them from this site to the user's intended destination. The user will not be aware that this is happening... however the site doing the redirecting will benefit because they are set up as an affiliate partner and will get a commission on the backs of the user. On a horrible scale of 1 - 10 for sleazy business practices, I rate this a 9.
Comments?"
Business 101 - try really , really hard to piss off your customers
I'll think of a funny sig later on
If this is a 9, I'd hate to see what the submitter considers a 10.
But I keep getting redirected to ZDnet somehow!
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Morpheus is totally fucked.
Thanks,
--
Matt
I guess this is why I entered cnn and ended up on slashdot.
feints within feints, wheels within wheels
A 10 is when it takes control of your computer, prints out ads, and has your AIBO tape them up all over your house. It paints your walls with company logos, tapes over your Star Trek tapes with infomercials, fills up your TiVO with the same, and replaces all your vinyls with Britney Spears CDs. It will kick your puppy and attack your kittens. It converts your children to Scientology and steals your beer.
...Business 101 - try really , really hard to piss ON your customers!
You're using her as bait, Master!
That would be Microsoft.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
The last time I ran a peer-to-peer client, the darn thing went and stole all my music! =)
Now I've seen it all!
Appended to the end of comments I post? 120 chars?!
Screw subscription based system for Slashdot. Just make up interesting articles and put them in the headlines and get the company involved to pay for being a referrer. Slashdot viewers would see great articles like this: Windows XP Home Page: Which Edition Is Right for You? and Target's Deal of the Week. In return, Microsoft and Target pay $0.01 a hit or something. CmdrTaco could retire in a few days!
It's like hijacking hits, but with the slashdot effect.
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
Under "Tools" -> "Internet Options" -> "Advanced" deselect "Enable third party browser extensions" and reboot. Even if the .dll responsible for the redirection, bpboh.dll, is installed, it won't be able to run.
Actually, it's:
"Tools" -> "Internet Options" -> "Advanced" -> deselect "Fraud"
Thus disabaling the most useful thing about IE, the google toolbar!
IOException - Can't Speak
Aha, so it's not really StreamCast that collects ad revenue through sleazy business practices, it's the Slashdot editors!
The conspiracy goes deeper than I thought...
(Just joking here, AnalogBoy. Your point is valid. A lot of the Slashdot articles are way too sensationalist.)
I always share /dev/zero, that does the job. If they still insist on "share more" then I also share /dev/random. :-)
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Except that according to stat, /dev/zero and /dev/random both have size of 0...
nighthowl:~$ perl -e 'print -s "/dev/random", "\n";'
0
Besides, what's easier to report with a long type: "zero size" or "infinite size"? =) Sure, it'd be neat to return LONG_MAX...
Gee, a company that makes money off of helping people steal is doing something else sleazy? Who would have thought!
As I've said before, 95% of the readers of Slashdot are just wanna-be Linux users, who use Windows cos, Oh, using Linux on the desktop is just too tricky in todys world.
Can't someone port it to KDE/Gnome?
If your such a real hardcore linux geek, and better than 95% of the slashdot readership then surely you would be able to port it to linux yourself.