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Gotcha! DNS Popup Scammer Fined $1.9 Million
Mister B writes: "A scam artist who trapped surfers mistyping their URLs (including those for children's websites) and barraged them with popup ads for pr0n and gambling has been busted to the tune of about $2 million. Apparently the FTC got ticked after having to close 64 separate browser windows! The FTC has a sense of humour nevertheless: the case name is 'Cupcake Party' (the scammer did business under 'Cupcake') :-) . More details at MSNBC and the FTC."
The court also has barred the defendant from participating in advertising affiliate programs on the Internet, and has ordered him to give up more than $1.8 million in ill-gotten gains.
People like this will always keep doing shit like this as long as there are enough morons out there to manage to give this dude $1.8 million.
Come on people, wake up.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Just wait until the FTC goes surfing for warez. Maybe they'll shut the bogus warez sites down as well and we'll finally be able to download Microsoft Bob by doing a search on Google.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
This website pops up 64 popups every time you visit it. Which is likely to be once, after you realize your mistake, you won't come back.
This is considered criminal behavior. But what about companies like X10 or Casino-On-Net that you see about 30 ads an hour for, every time you try to use the web? In the end it is those companies that make you close more ad windows. I think that those are far more guilty. What about the pr0n ads that won't let you use the back button to leave, and if you try to close the window, they re-open themselves? I shudder to think how many thousands of popups from those companies I've closed in my lifetime.
Of course, it's the browsers themselves that are allowing these popups to happen. I would bet that companies like Doubleclick are paying M$ and Netscape not to develop protection from popups within their browsers. But I'm a conspiracy theorist.
-Evan
Since when does people who can't spell count as a design flaw?
From the article: FTC investigators said Zuccarini makes from $800,000 to $1 million per year by charging advertisers whose ads appear on the browser windows.
In this case the advertisers are getting screwed more than the poor sap who fat-fingered the URL. My question is "Do companies who advertise on the web have any control over how their ads are used?" Cupcake is getting paid by the popup and is really sticking to these advertisers and even moreso because the ads aren't really reaching a target market. I would think the advertisers have more to lose than the person browsing. With that in mind, how hard would it be to script a browser to feed off these popups by creating false hits and start bankrupting advertisers who really don't care how their ads are used.
'Same speed C but faster'
Here are some of the scammed domains they are talking about
http://www.caroonnetwork.com
http://www.cartoo
http://www.artoonnetwork.com
http://
http://www.cartoonnetork.co
http://www.cartoonnetwrk.com
http://www.catoon
http://www.cartoonnetwok.com
[alk]
I'm glad only a few people use browser's that block pop-ups. If everyone blocked pop-ups, then advertisers would just use harder to get around schemes, such as putting the content of the page in the pop-up and the ad in the page your browser goes to, or larger ads in the page.
Slashdot knows a lot of their users block pop-ups so they put their ads on the pages they serve, plus they serve them from images.slashdot.org so that people can't block it on their hosts file.
As long as only a small percentage of people block pop-ups and use hosts files I can surf the internet without seeing X-10 ads ever, so you should tell people that they shouldn't block pop-ups and that it hampers their web surfing experience.
Cupcake's lawyer: "Good news, Cupcake. I just got back from a meeting with the prosecution.
Cupcake: Ok, and what did they say? I'm anxious to know just how bad off I am. Fill me in."
Cupcake's Lawyer: Sure thing. Here's the deal -- The have decided to SEE HOT CHIXXX WITH YOUR NEW X10 CAMERA!!! FREE!!!!!!!!! HOT!!! FREE!!
Cupcake: Yeah, very funny. Now get serious, i'm paying you by the hour. What happened at the meeting?
Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!! HOT NOW!!!! FREE HOT!!! NOW FREE!!!! NOW FREE HOT!!! "
Cupcake: "Stop it!!"
Cupcake's Lawyer: "So, we're not going to have to worry about the fact that the judicial process in these sorts of matters can tend to take HOT XXX HORNY SLUTS!!!!! "
Cupcake: "STOP!!!!"
Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!! HOT HOT FREE HOT NOW!!!! NOW!!! NOW!!!!!!!! FREE NOW!!!! so, you wont be going anywhere for a while. In the meantime, i've asked the presiding judge to look into the prosecutions CASINO ON-NET!!!!!!"
Cupcake: "STOP!! STOP IT!!! JUST STOP IT!!!! NOW!!"
Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!! HOT FREE XXX!!!! XXX NOW!!!! XXX NOW FREE!!!! FREE!!! HOT CASINO!!! HOT CASINO FREE!!!!!!!!!! FREE HOT XXX NEW CASINO!!!! FREE CASINO!!!, so gimmie a call when you decide what to do, and we can go from there. Talk to ya HOT!!!! XXX!!!! FREE HOT!!! then."
Cupcake: But wait a minute! You havent told me......
Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!!!!!!!! HOT XXX CASINO!!! FREE CASINO HOT!!!"
Cupcake: "But!.... But wait!! Dont go yet! You havent..."
Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Bowie J. Poag
No, i'm sorry but i don't see the crime here. Sure the guy is a complete f*cking asshole, but thats still legal (unfortunately, as there are many many assholes around). If you type in the wrong url, thats your fault. If he was spoofing other sites or using they're graphics, thats a copyright issue. But opening pop-ups no matter how many is the fault of the browser.. and seeing as most people use IE, its Microsofts fault, just like with vbs virii (funny how its always their fault)
"Victims of the scam should contact the commission"
What victims??!? the stupid users who used stupid browsers that have bad security? (yes pop-ups are a security issue when they start eating your resources). What about the stupid advertising companies? he was in breach of their contract, they should have cancelled it.
Apparently the FTC got ticked after having to close 64 separate browser windows! - judging by the use of the word "task bar" lets assume he was using MS Windows
Well thats what you get when you use MS windows and IE. I would be pretty ticked too, but not at the site, at the appalling software design of Microsoft who hand the responsibility off saying "ohhh trusted system" no it isn't, its simple. Don't let sites spawn 100's of windows with your browser. Put in the necessary function to filter this, let the user say yes or no, let them close all the spawned windows at once, make the browser scan the script for this stuff. stupid developers.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
A few weeks ago, my boss' 8-yr-old daughter was at school, in the computer lab. She went to go to Yahoo's kid site, Yahooligans, but mistyped it - www.yahooligons.com. She got the porn ad page. So, to her credit, she backed out. To her ANTI-credit, though, she went back, called a friend over to check it out. I can imagine this girl going "Look! BOOBIES!" *laugh*. Another nearby kid saw this, and told a teacher. The principal wanted to suspend her for a week - the parents (who rushed to the school when they heard about this) managed to talk them down to a day.
A couple of days later, I start sniffing around WHOIS records, and whose name do I find attached to the domain? John Zuccarini.
Glad to see this scumbag getting what he deserves.
The first illegality is trademark infringement. The defendant, in many cases, used registered trademarks of companies in order to bombard people who attempted to visit a web site related to a product that they owned or were considering the purchase of. He had already lost 200 such sites through court cases.
The next illegality is the use of malicious code to bombard people with pop-up windows when they did things as innocuous as hit the back button. Many people were reduced to restarting their computer to escape from the mess that the defendant created. Exploiting a weakness in a computer, whether to spread a worm or pop up dozens of unwanted windows, is illegal.
It is illegal to display porn to children. That's why porn sites have an "I-am-over-18" button (so I am told). The defendant's web sites had no such protections.
Finally, "typosquatting" is illegal. The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act became law in November of 1999 and made it illegal for a person to register or use, with a "bad faith" intent to profit from, an Internet domain name that is "identical or confusingly similar" to the distinctive or famous trademark or Internet domain name of another person or company. No one should know that better than John Zuccarini, against whom the third district court upheld that law in a decision rendered in June of 2001.
On a side note, I spoke to John Zuccarini (the defendant) about a year ago. I tracked down his phone number after being pissed off about being hit by his scam when I typed in a URL in the form of "www.{product name}.com". I informed him that the URL contained a registered trademark. He was a rude asshole and I am just sorry that he's being fined rather than jailed.