Slashdot Mirror
A New Low for Web Advertisers: Pop-Up Downloads
rizzmanix writes: "I thougt it was strange that I had been getting a lot of pop-up download prompts for the Gator software as I browsed around the web in the recent days. Why were all these sites requiring this Gator thing I wondered?
Well I wonder no more... as apparently advertisers hit a new low by running 'pop-up downloads' instead of pop-up ads. Sneaky, underhanded, nasty and vile."
www.scumware.com
-Styopa
What programs do this? I've never, ever seen a webbrowser that automatically installs stuff. At least not until you specifically specify for that site only (like MS Updates, or Station.Sony.com)
"But those horror stories are the exception. More typically, software makers are simply using the downloads to distribute legitimate products."
Legitimate products don't automatically download onto my computer without my concent.
Free Mac Mini
Since 0.9.4, mozilla users have had the ability to block onload and unload pop-ups/unders. I've had zero problems with this. It doesn't block pop-ups you request, just the ones you don't.
I've not seen a popup in months and months. It's fantastic.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
I've seen this thing before on pr0n sites... once again they're leading the way on the web. I never thought that traditional advertisers would stoop this low, though. I wonder what's next?
-Russ
Ooh, wait. What I meant was my FRIENDS have seen stuff like this and told me about it. Wait, I don't have friends that look at pr0n either... umm. I read about this sort of thing, yeah. That's it...
Me
Yet another reason to browse with Mozilla or Opera with onLoad (or all) popups disabled.
Most of these advertising techniques either rely on browsers (or users) who don't or can't disable popups easily. (read: 90% of the internet explorer population.) Or they rely on Internet Explorer specific techniques, e.g. windowless flash animations (transparent backgrounds) for shoshkeles, etc.
I think it's time the antivirus companies step up to the plate for the average consumer, and add blocking/filtering to the AV clients. Maybe it's overkill, but if you could tag these popup downloads as a potential virus (or at least unauthorized use of your computer) the world would be a better place. Or, create some add-ons to mozilla which filter popups against a database (ala the defunct spamcop) popupcop?
When something is sold as "advertising" but is nothing less than an attempt to trick or confuse a person into purchasing, downloading or installing your software, that's misrepresentation and/or fraud. Regardless of any 2pt fine-print at the bottom, or "user agreement" on the page. Hard to stop them, though.
What's interesting and revealing about Gator's approach is that the well-known Nimda worm spread by injecting popup download code into IIS-served web pages, exploiting a vulnerability in Internet Explorer that caused the user NOT to be prompted before the dowloaded program executed.
Pretty soon we'll see pop-ups that say:
/tmp /tmp ./configure (For help with options, do ./configure --help)
Do you wish to install this file? YES / NO
If yes, please do the following:
- Download file and save to
- cd
- tar xvzf slashpopup.tar.gz
- cd slashpopup
-
- make
- su
- make install
....Finished!
"Do you accept this download?" If the consumer clicks "Yes," an application is automatically installed.
This clutter has created a haven for pop-up downloads because consumers find it hard to determine the ad's origin.
Gator isn't the only software maker using this tactic to add consumers.
"Consumers want control of their PCs," Gator President Jeff McFadden said in a statement.
Why am I a consumer just because I am accessing the Internet? The problem here is not the pop-up technology, but the unwritten assumption (perpetuated by the author of the report) that we are all just mindless "consumers of product" that need to be targeted by ads.
Only when this mindset is abandoned will we see an end to attention grabbing and demographic gathering.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
To go along with the Opera folks out there, I've got to chime in and say I absolutely love being able to filter unsolicited popups. God I love that feature. It makes browsing pron sites soo much better. Also disable the window resizing shit. No longer will popup bastards resize a window beyond your screensize!
And PPC Linux binaries are probably out of the question...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Wow, yet another "I didn't read the article, but I feel fully qualified to comment on it" response...
For you and others like you, it specifically states that a pop-up box appears and requires the user to accept the download, and they rely on the fact that 99.999999% of the non-slashdot population immediately assumes it is something they need and click "Yes".
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Well, for those of us who are forced to deal with an Micro$oft environment, there is some good news. Remember Nimda? It operated in a similar way when it was spread through web-pages, by forcing a download. Internet Explorer had a weakness that allowed this to happen. Now, however, they have the fix in IE 5.5 SP2... might also want to get whatever critical updates there are from the Window$ update site. So if you have that, and the patch for Nimda you shouldn't be forced to do anything. Cancel should always be allowed.
And honestly, people, if you set yourself to automatically accept downloads, you're just asking for a trojan.
Now that you know the defense, let's talk about the offense. Some very respectable Hackers have already created programs designed to kill browser popups. Might I suggest as a new challenge for these ingenius few that a program be created that you can simply set an auto-cancel after a program asks you once to download it (like Gator)?
For those of us without that level of programming ability, I recommend giving these companies that do this a flood of email complaints, expressing just how much we detest the all-time low they have reached. Since so many of us are in the IT or helpdesk field, we're in a unique position in that people believe what we say. If Gator persists in these forced-downloads, then start letting every single one of your customers know that Gator stands a chance of royally screwing up their operating system and compromising their security. If they ask for specifics, look for any bug whatsoever that has been reported, or that you can find in the program, and exploit it like a cheap tabloid. If it crashed one persons system and made them reboot, then it -always- crashes systems... etc.
Of course, I myself would never result to any illegal means, but legal strongarm tactics are very effective when done in mass-quantity. If enough of us get together on this, and enough sand is thrown by enough people, advertisers will eventually get the hint.
Now who's with me?
-The Libra
"Maybe Lisa's right about America being the land of opportunity, and maybe Adil's got a point about the machinery of capitalism being oiled with the blood of the workers." - Homer Simpson
I started using Gator because Ebates suggested it... I like Ebates a lot and they were suggesting (not even pushing) Gator because of its form-management and password remembering functions, which weren't commonly available in browsers at that point. At that time, Gator was more of a helpful tool than a malignant advertising injector.
As Gator has evolved it's become more and more malicious; popping up ads when I'm browsing is the most annoying, but also it's started placing its own ads over banner ads on web pages - that doesn't annoy me any more than the banner ads would but I think it's a pretty evil practice and I don't want to support it.
The only reason I've kept using Gator is that I have a large investment in terms of the passwords I have stored in it, but there are other, better ways to take care of that problem. At this point I run Gator with it completely blocked by firewall software, so it can't update itself and it can't download ads or offers. If you delete everything in C:\PROGRAM FILES\COMMON FILES\GMT\BANNERS you'll get rid of the ads it's already downloaded.
One thing that "society" tries to do is protect the average joe from the consequences of ignorance. Why do that, you ask? Why not let Darwin take his course? Because as our wealth grows and our world becomes more complex, everyone is ignorant about some areas of life. And today, everyone is ignorant about most things that keep us alive (dug your own well lately?).
So let's be careful here - just because Slashdotters know better than to click on that Yes doesn't mean everyone does or should.
sPh
I think we'll only be able to escape the constant bombardment of advertisments (And skript kiddie attacks and all the other comparatively recent crap) by establishing our own network on top of the internet. It's easy to do and we're technically capable of doing it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Add them to the Restricted Sites zone. That will (by default) keep them from running any code, including signed and unsigned ActiveX, and even cookies.
My dad called to ask if I could come over and 'fix' his computer. I'm always willing to come down and see dad and untangle whatever mess exists on his PC.
His dial-up connection was slow, he said. Indeed, every site I visited in his favorites was really slow and now wonder... everysite seemed to launch a couple of pop-unders that were consuming bandwidth downloading ads.
"Yeah, I've been getting that ever since I installed 'gator'"
"gator is something I got from yahoo that helps me fill in forms or something"
That rat-bastard gator had put hooks everywere, was a real pain to uninstall ("please stop the gator program before proceeding" - except to the ordinary user the concept of stopping a taskbar icon isn't very obvious).
The uninstaller launched a browser and loaded a page telling you why you shouldn't uninstall. Geez, go away already!
Yeah, my dad is pretty clueless - I reminded him not to download and install stuff unless he is pretty clear on what he is getting.
This software seems to exploit that cluelessness, posing as some innocuous, helpful utility when it's real purpose is far more invasive and it is relatively complicated to get rid of.
Grab RoboForm instead. It's freeware and it doesn't have any ads nor does it contain spyware. It'll even let you import all your Gator passwords. There's absolutely no reason to keep using Gator.
I've seen sites (cardcentral.net) that use JavaScript to put their own dialog over everything but the Yes/No buttons on the download box. The dialog box appeared to be something along the lines of "Security warning: You are infected with a virus. Clean?"
This isn't too restrictive. Big players, like Amazon, Yahoo Store, and the major search sites, all work under these restrictions. If your site doesn't, your site is broken.
Not too sure if this has been said yet, but this is an amazing tool that will clean all the spyware from your system. You will be amazed at how much you have on there. It is called AdAware and can be downloaded free from the link below.
http://www.lavasoftusa.com