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A Gator By Any Other Name
MFS! writes "CNet reports that Gator, everyone's favorite ad software, is changing its name to Claria. Gator's CEO says "We feel that the Claria Corporation name will allow us to better communicate the expanding breadth of offerings that we provide to consumers and advertisers." He fails to mention what "Claria" is supposed to mean or how it accomplishes this goal, but it seems that the name change may be no more than an attempt to distance the company from a moniker which has become involved in allegations of spyware."
That Clarica hasn't complained about Gator's new name being so similar to theirs.
If I were in the life insurance business you'd better believe I wouldn't want my name associated with something so malicious as spyware.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
And asked them nicely to investigate any legal avenues they might have in relation to challenging gator. They may or may not react, but I think we should support them if they decide to take action. Certainly this story should be covered, to give them something to distinguish themselves from a potential PR disaster.... so Slashdot articles could send traffic their way. But only if they have the balls to stand up to these spyware bastards... or at least speak out against them.
I feel it is the least we can do to help some small company which will no doubt have to change it's name because of all this.
It's sad really. Much is ill in the world.
Gator is basically just malware like any other virus or trojan. Just because a company produces it and claims it has a valid purpose doesn't make it any less evil. The CDC started claiming BackOrifice2k was a remote administration tool, but that didn't make it any less frustrating to find someone had compromised your system and installed it on there without your knowledge to take control of your machine.
Everyone whose computer I have ever found Gator (and tons of other spyware) on has had no idea what it does or how they installed it. They click on some link (these are teenagers for example.. they're click happy) and suddenly they have a wonderful new time syncing app or a datebook! Great right? Well, until their computer eventually slows to a halt and starts crashing, personal information is spewed out across the Internet without their consent, and/or their computer is used as some kind of distributed cracking node without their knowledge. McAfee, Symantec and others need to be forced to accept that malware like Gator IS a virus and needs to be cleaned from a system. We shouldn't have to use yet another malware cleaner like Adaware to get rid of it. If Gator and other spyware made it VERY clear they were installed and cooperated 100% with the add/remove programs in Win2k to completely remove themselves and ALL their components when you remove them then I wouldn't have such a huge issue with shareware software installing it. It's an annoyance at that point, but easily remedied like having an AOL icon created on your desktop.
Another casualty is performance: these spyware programs arent just tracking your usage and pushing advertising, they are consuming finite computer resources in the form of processing power, networking bandwidth, and memory space.
I have seen firsthand what all of these programs do to a corporate environment, and it is just as bad (if not worse) than a virus. The difference between a virus and spyware is that the former can kill or corrupt your computer, while the latter weakens and sufficates it.
Since these computers have no protection against the spyware, this causes many effects- all of which bleed resources from the company.
1) degraded computer performance: the worker now has to work slower
2) increased network bandwidth consumtion: this degrades network performance for the entire company, as well as again consuming an ever-growning share of a finite resource (WAN bandwidth)
3) increased computer support: the time and expense involved in having somebody diagnose and fix the problem effecting the client computer(s)
Once you start trying impliment a solution, a company is forced to spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of man-hours planning and implimenting a solution to stop all the spyware.
I would encourage companies to start taking legal action against these spyware companies. What they are doing is every bit as bad and immoral as releasing computer viruses into the wild.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
They install a program on your machine that sends data over your connection about your behavior, right?. So, why don't we give them what they're are asking for? Why don't develop a program to send fake data to the server that gator is connecting to? If the data is credible (=random but correct), they have a mountain of crap data about users ... and voila, their business plan is useless
"Hmmm, this Palladium of ours seems to be garnering a lot of bad press lately. I know, we'll call it NGSCB so no one will know what it really does!!" - Microsoft stooge.
"Man, this Total Information Awareness idea of ours seems to be upsetting those pesky privacy advocates. I know, we'll call it Terrorism Information Awareness, then if the privacy advocates cry foul we can call them unpatriotic and lock them up at Guantanamo." - John Poindexter.
Face it people, when a company/organisation changes the name of something to obfuscate it's true intentions, you know it's a bad thing.
I say play them at their own game. Just call spyware "Clariaware" from now on.
Quizo69
Visceral Psyche Films