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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."
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.)
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 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.
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.
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!
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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.