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Gator Examined
Ben Perry writes "News.com.com has a story about a Harvard researcher's study on how Gator operates. The report 'provides some data as to how much advertising Gator is showing and to whom it is targeted' and focuses on where Gator replaces a site's ads with Gator's ads. Gator is facing several lawsuits because of this technique."
I really wish there was an option to entirely disable the download prompt in IE.
There is absolutely nothing in that article that is news to anyone here. Well, except maybe the fact that Sun uses Gator to advertise. I wouldn't have thought they'd stoop that low, especially since many people boycott companies that use services such as Gator to advertise.
I guess it really doesn't matter if I boycott Sun, though. I'm much more likely to implement a Linux solution than a Sun solution. It's all about the Benjamins, and I don't generally do work for companies with unlimited (or even moderately deep) pockets.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
I don't beleive Gator will transfer my password file to their servers. Too little to gain, too much to lose. Besides, I don't store really important passwords, like online banking or /. account :)
Frankly I am vehemetly against loosing my computing freedom but I would very happily choose to loose the freedom to write exploitive parasiteware that does not help the user one bit.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
How can you trust your passwords to an app the likes of gator? It is clear to me that they have to ethical backbone.
For the same reasons that people trust Microsoft products (like IE) with their personal details (passwords, financial information, etc.). Microsoft clearly have no ethics, either.
OLPC Australia
In my experience, Gator is not as much of a problem as GAIN (Gator Advertising & Information Network) - where Gator is the e-wallet, GAIN is the ad (spy) ware. Getting rid of Gator isn't so hard, but removing GAIN involves removing the application its using - for most Windows users this would mean removing IE, and we all know how difficult that can be...
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
-dunar
My friend bought a new computer and after about 3 months it was running very very slowly. I removed Gator and some other stuff and computer perked up instantly. Well after about 4 reboots.
A customer installed it on his computer and several programs including application I support ceased to function, and these were the apps he needed to do his job. The only way we could fix it was to re-image the hard drive.
My friend's staff installed some sort of calendar tool and gator came with that. Personally I can't think of any reason to install it. The last thing I'd want to do is hand my passwords to anything that sends my information back over the internet. How would I know that it wasn't sending my passwords too?
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
I don't really trust Gator at all, but if you a have an effective popup blocker, the software is actually really nice. Not only does it remember your passwords and forms, but it can fill in a form, even if you have never visited the page before. It has enough intelligence to know to put your address into a form that has a slot that says "Address" or "Address #1", and your last name in a form slot that says "Last Name" or "Sirname" or "Full Name".
If it were available for a fee without the adware/spyware, I would buy it.
Interesting, I went to look at www.gator.com, but the first time round I typed gator.com instead. Apparently Gator has a Debian mirror, but you can't access it from the outside. (No doubt it will disappear soon after it gets Slashdotted.)
<snip>
1. Google's immortal cookie:
Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.
2. Google records everything they can:
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."
3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.
4. Google won't say why they need this data:
Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.
5. Google hires spooks:
Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency. Google wants to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.
6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf. Yes, it reads your cookie too, and sends along the last search terms you used in the toolbar. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you phone home. Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google.
7. Google's cache copy is illegal:
Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google's cache copy appears to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."
8. Google is not your friend:
Young, stupid script kiddies and many bloggers still think Google is "way kool," so by now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most websites. No webmaster can avoid seeking Google's approval these days, assuming he wants to increase traffic to his site. If he tries to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, he may find himself penalized by Google, and his traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time they don't even answer email from webmasters.
9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
With 150 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
People actually use gator on purpose? Who is this a Gator developer? Really, if you want password management you should be using Mozilla. Anyone that supports a business model based on spyware should be drug out on the street and shot. Why would anyone be using IE these days unless they were forced to by their employer?
It bloody well should be. I mean If I go out and deface a webpage thats hacking and I can go to jail. What did I do? I changed what the website owners wanted the viewer to see. If I write some 2bit program that along with it's crappy usefull functionality changes a websites banner adds I have just done the same thing. Only the way it stands right now I wont get in any trouble. I think it should be up to the end user that way the we don't run in to the problem of say how is a pop up blocker legal. It should be legal because the end user can choose to activate it. The end user can't chose to in the case of Gator or a defaced website. $0.02
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
It would be interesting to see what other popular "helper" applications like Gator do. For example, I see plenty of people in my work place with WeatherBug or WebShots installed on their computers. They have to be collecting information and replacing ads much like Gator does.
Why, because 47% of (australian?) people believe they should invest something even if they think the offer is too good to be true.
Too good to be true, full report page 54
scary stuff. Lots of nigerians making money out of it. Not to mention dinner party ladies across the USA.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
could you post this? is it just some lines to add to my hosts file?
What the hell, some of the cameras look kind of interesting. I mean, at least I'm clicking on an ad that has some techno appeal.
It's not like I'm clicking on a popup for grocery coupons or some lame travel service or something.
I am sure software like this has caused big problems for a lot of people. I've had two bad run-ins with stuff like this.
The first was some software similar to Gator called WebHancer. I still have no idea how it got on my computer. Between my lack of patience and my dialup connection at the time, I never downloaded software or anything more than web browsing on my home computer. When I was on the internet one day, I lost the connection and all of a sudden my dialup software would not reconnect due to some weird error. I called the ISP and they said that they could not fix it, it had something to do with conflicting software. Then I found this software. After uninstalling it and reinstalling the dialup software several times, I still had the same problem. I exchanged several emails (I kept professional since I knew it would not help to yell insults and my real thoughts at them) with the company behind WebHancer. They consistently told me that what had happened could not have happened. It was "impossible" to have gotten it on my system without clicking through two EULAs (and I actually read EULAs for what I install). They also said there was no way it could mess up my internet access and that the uninstall program removes it. Finally I solved it by purposely downloading their software elsewhere and installing and uninstalling it on my system which fixed it.
The second incident happened a week ago. While reading some software reviews, a window came up that looked like one of those stupid popups designed to look like a dialog box. It would not let me close it. Then I noticed it had a status bar claiming it was searching my computer and optimizing or some euphemism for downloading and installing. Thanks to my quick LAN connection, by the time I got the task manager up to nuke it, it had finished. I checked the readme and it said to run the uninstaller to remove it, but of course running the uninstalling simply generates an error message saying uninstall failed. This one I was able to remove by deleting files and cleaning the registry. I am not sure how this one installed though, since I have my settings to prompt me for pretty much every action.
Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me; there might have been other spyware that did this. But I'm pretty sure it was gator/GAIN. Now I am a happy linux user, and don't have to worry about things installing themselves without me knowing. (still have a lot to learn though; I'm a bit of a newb. Mandrake makes everything so easy; it's almost like windows (which can be good and bad I suppose))
I noticed that the lawsuit Gator was facing was launched June, 2002. Does anybody know whatever happened to it?
Did they settle? Was it dismissed? What of it!
An online Starcraft RPG? Free, only at
In soviet russia, all your us are belong to us!
Karma: Redundant
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
And are you sure Gator is only *storing* your passwords for you?? Are you sure that Gator is secure against malware that may know how to access passwords stored by Gator?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Spyware causes nothing but problems for every single person I've ever encountered with it on their computer. Everything from using 90%+ of the CPU and slowing their computer to a crawl (sometimes with dozens of different spybots installed without the user having any clue about them) to losing sound in certain applications. The last three times my mother has called me frantically saying her computer is broke because she has no sound was Gator. Uninstalling it mysteriously fixed it, every single time. Spyware makers can go to hell along with the pedophiles and spammers.