Trojans and Popups and Slimeball Business

Selanit writes "Salon.com is reporting on a company which exploited a vulnerability in an old but common version of Internet Explorer's Java engine to install spyware on the visitor's machine. " It's a pretty in depth story showing the lack of respect that some companies have. My favorite part is that the guy who denies any knowledge of the trojan popup is named 'Frank Bigott'.

Comments

Re:'scuse my language, but

[hagardtroll]

Yes. The .com weenies who are still struggling to survive are doing it with questionable ethics.

You notice as available VC goes down, the number of pop-ups, subscriptions and sleazy sites go up.

I like to think that eventually the sleazy and make-abuck-quick companies will finally go under, and the web will be more like it was before. A communications medium for PEOPLE to communcate, rather than a giant catalog that consumers can shop from.

I can dream.

Block Flowgo at SMTP

[toupsie]

Flowgo has been a burr in my britches for quite a while. It appears that everyone of my e-mail users gets "newsletters" from Flowgo. About 30% admit to visiting the Flowgo site but swear up and down that they did not request the newsletter. At first, I tried to be nice and contact Flowgo and ask for them to remove my employee from their newsletters (its easier than trying to instruct them to do it). Got back no response. At first I was shocked that Flowgo would not remove them. So after giving them a week, I went into my Postfix configuration and blocked off any e-mail from Flowgo. That was 5 months ago. Still today, I bounce 50 to 100 messages from Flowgo from my mail server. I noticed that several blackhole lists are doing the same now.

There has to be a solution to this sort of problem. About the only way I could get Flowgo to stop SPAMMING my mail server is to call up a buddy of Tony Soprano to break their knees because Flowgo doesn't care and I have never, ever, ever been able to get one of my elected officials or law enforcement agency to pay any interest in Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail. Its not like Flowgo is hiding its behavior either. It should be easy to get them but no one that matters or has the power, gives a damn about this huge waste of bandwidth.

What's scarier

[shawnmelliott]

I don't know what's scarier. This article or that a related article at the bottom of this one talks about our "friend" Fritz who wants to "protect" spyware by defining what's sensitive.

Quote
The second is "nonsensitive" information, and among that will include your name, address, and records of anything you buy or surf on the Internet. Under the act, business can't collect or divulge the sensitive bits without your express consent, but anything classified as nonsensitive can be freely collected and sold at will.
End Quote

The article can be found here

What bothers me...

[j-turkey]

What bothers me the most, is that Federal Law Enforcement agencies have been going after individuals who crack corprate machines for years -- and hitting them with hard criminal charges (or in some cases, just throwing them in jail without clear or formal criminal charges).

Its clear that the federal government is zealous in its crusade to protect corporate America from "hackers". But who protects individuals from shady companies?

Its also clear that the company behind the trojan popups has engaged in criminal activity...but where the hell is the criminal investigation -- anyone being brought up on charges? At most -- we might see some fiducary damages awarded to someone (but not anyone here -- and not to anybody we know)...but if the feds can throw Kevin in jail -- I want the fuckers responsible for this kind of malicous marketing in jail too...(don't forget spammers either).


-Turkey