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Utah Sees First Spyware Case
denlin writes "According to a story at The Register: 'Overstock.com is set to become the first company to take action under Utah's new anti-spyware law. The company has filed a complaint against online retailer SmartBargains in the third district court in Salt Lake City. Utah's spyware law, the world's first, only made the statute book on 3 May. Utah is the only state with current spyware legislation, although California and Iowa are considering their own versions of the law.'"
Patrick Byrne's comments regarding the hijacking of affiliate profits are dead on.
.2% of what you would
normally get by traditional targeted banner advertising but the cost of the campaign is
about 30% of the price. When you consider that in a commercial banner campaign your
best hope is a 2% clickthrough (and even that is not that easy anymore) I can't see anyone except the ad companies making any money.
I haven able to gather some interesting statistics about the "Parasitic" methods discussed in the article. The conversion of Visitors to Customer is about
In my humble experience the spyware companies and their affiliates target small startup companies luring them in with the cheap cost of getting new customers. Heck that's how they got me to spend 350$ on a campaign that ran on WhenU. For the money spend I received 0 Customers, 3 Complains and my CC being charged triple that took almost 30 days to resolve. But I receive at least 5 e-mails daily and at least 1 call per week from people advertising this exact same product.
You go Utah!!!
I'm getting sick and tired of low life no morals spyware companies knowing what me and my 5 wives are browsing on the internet!
what Bonzi Buddy wouolld have to say about that!
...when I say that it's about tupping time . I just hope that they can't wriggle their way out of it with an appeal.
I'm selling my K5 acct.
I wonder if they will actually get anywhere. While Spyware is annoying and intrusive, the people who put it on your computer are generally in the right by their agreements. Most people that get spyware are uninformed, and ignorant. If you open unsolisited email, or if you download P2P, and other such software, you will end up with spyware.
Sue Bonzi Buddy plz SUE that purple monkey out of this world to make it a better place!
From the article: Patrick Byrne, president of Overstock said: "Pop-up ads have been to Web browsing what spam is to email. Within the world of affiliate marketing, such software is often called 'parasiteware' on the grounds that the companies which distribute such code and those who advertise through it are parasitic on legitimate commerce: spyware hijacks not only consumer spending, but the commissions that would otherwise be paid to legitimate affiliate community"
Ok, I get the idea that spyware is parasitic- but do we really need the cobbled together "parasiteware" to describe it?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Here's what I have always wondered - why do merchants say the 1st amendment protect intrusive advertising? Seems to me that if someone doesn't want to hear it, they shouldn't be forced to. Faxers, spammers, all try to hind behind the constitution. I thought the First Amendment only protects free speech, it does not guarantee an audience. Also, it really isn't free speech if it costs people something is it (bandwidth, etc)?
The article is a bit sparse on detail, but here's a link I dug up: Link.
Quite law, that. I wonder if it will work?
Why not just drop a few quads and imagine the Gmail?
IA was one of the few states that had an anti-spam law on the books before the federal government stepped in and fucked everything up with there idiotic (yes you) CAN-SPAM act.
Hopefully more states will follow suit and things can quiet down for a while before the Fed steps in and legalizes it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Can someone verify or debunk this? It seems Andy Kaufman may really be alive.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Spyware authors may have been "in the right" :-) An EULA contract is nothing
prior to this law. Why do you think the law
was passed?
when it goes against the law.
I run linux and have never had to deal with spyware or adware on my own computer (though I hear one company is using .xpi to add a "search bar" to Mozilla). My parents, however, run Windows. My little sister installs programs from cereal boxes that are full of spyware, and I swear one of those programs caused porn pop-ups to be displayed on my computer.
So what I'm getting at, is that spyware is a huge problem and it's long time someone did something about it! It's just a pity that there hasn't been a government agency or a court brave enough to bring a big judgement against the industry. The fact of the matter is, these programs vandalize people's systems. They are a form of property damage. Plus they expose people to pornographic ads. They break so many laws already. It is too bad that there has to be legislation before someone can make them pay.
I want to get on the band wagon and file a suit against Overstock.com! I bought one thing from them and I have been getting bombarded with emails sometimes two or three times a day.
I even tried to opt out of their email list and the onslaught continues. So before they start sueing people they need to examine their in house activites.
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
Doesn't anyone think these should be class action lawsuits started by consumers rather then competitors? This just leaves too much room for overstock to declair advertising practices of their competitor unlawful just to get them out of the picture, not to champion the rights of online consumers. This is almost as corrupt as the idea of Spyware, addware in general! The two cases that have been posted on Slash dot within the last week have been both started by companies who are in direct competition with the plaintifs. This doesn't seem like a revolution where the consumer is taking back his right to accept or reject advertisements it more or less seems like a great way to get rid of competitors who had to resort to unaccepted advertisement methods in order to get an edge on the monopolistic front runner!
Maybe LL Bean should have filed suit in Utah instead of in Maine? Yes, it's different because this one will test Utah's new law. But this sounds like exactly the same problem, and since the story's short on details, it could even be the same culprit (claria).
If you're ignorant, and someone pushes a big knife in your back, then that is the ignorant person's fault by your reasoning, not the stabber?
GET REAL ASSHOLE - you don't know anymore what is right and what is wrong.
I let my son use my wife's computor to go look up airplane pictures. He is 11, is beginning to learn how to use a browser and search engines. So, I figure OK, let him learn. Well, what happens when he accidently clicks on a web page that has one of the "do you want to install" things on it? This is not unsolicted email, not p2p. And these sites are such that you cant tell you are going to get the treatment until *after* you have clicked the link.
/. was right on for this problem.
OK, I can tell him to always click no. But they word the text such that persons of average adult learning and intelligence think that saying yes is a good thing. So what is an 11 year old going to do? And how about if it is one of those sites that continually brings the "do you want to install" prompt back up if you answer "no". Try it sometime, it is not fun for me. He is going to get fed up and answer yes ( which is exactly what they want... ).
I think that "pure software" act I saw here on
emt 377 emt 4
When I saw the words lawsuit and Utah together I expected the worst. Why is it hard to contemplate any good from a lawsuit in Utah? Or at least anthing good happening fast, like in my lifetime.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Every time a Utah story is posted, someone thinks they are funny by talking about multiple wives. But they aren't, neither are they informed.
I suppose this means we can look forward to the UCANSPY act.
I can see two actually. One, you aren't violating the terms of service (If you were to make multiple hotmail accounts. Not your point, but it was his.) (and yes, hotmail and yahoo have both gotten much better lately.)
The second, you can tell who is selling/mishandling email addresses. If you register for a site with one of these, and then you decide you actually want to use the service longterm, you can be alerted to the possibility of letting one of your real addresses out into the wild.
(disclaimer: I've never used this service. I just think I see where the poster was going with this.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Spy ware is nothing but legal virusus in my book. Some legal mumbo-jumbo in a EULA saying that I agree to allow you to install third party crap that does god knows what is just unethical and should be illegal. The fact that most of this stuff then ferments to a greater level of scum by spying on me etc. just adds to the insult. NOONE would knowingly agree to ANY of the things, if the EULA were actually truthful about all the effects of clicking on the "I Agree" button. The social engineering done by the lawyers in these EULAs is no differrent then the social enginneering in an email getting someone to open an attachment. The results, in my book are the same. Now I've got a virus on my machine. Both should be equally illegal.
I live in Utah and I didn't even know we HAD a spyware law!! Thank you slashdot!!!
I don't recall anyone ever being given the option of being stabbed and saying yes. If you are ignorant enough to say yes to a stabbing, then you have some other issues. I advocate education over ignorance my friend.
He asked me "Why don't you ever have to deal with this crap on your system?"
I dropped a knoppix cd on his desk and simply said "Linux."
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
Utah: the double-edged sword.
They criminalize Spyware. Yay!
They give birth to SCOware. Boo!
There's a really great/awful "Citibank" scam that javascripts images that mimick the address bar and secure status bar, plus javascripting a fake verisign popup. It took netstat'ing to convince a coworker it was fake.
None of this particularly makes me regret running Linux, personally...
All's true that is mistrusted
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Then you must be the only one on the planet who always completely reads all legal agreements in all software that he downloads. That is what you are saying - all people do that... In reality nobody does that. So that invalidates your reasoning.
Yawn.
Okay, I really hate flambaint annoying posting, but this is an exception. You don't have to read EULA to figure out that it is adaware. Use some common sense !! It does not take a genious to find these things out. At the very least, run some sort of adaware like program to get rid of spyware.
After Adaware and Spybot pronounced my wife's PC clean, it still appeared to have problems. So I ran Moosoft's "The Cleaner" and found nine more Trojans.
The moral of this extended story is: don't stop at one or maybe even two spyware-adware removers. Malware is clever and insidious and needs to be treated with a "cocktail" mix of software antibiotics.
Hello, jwcorder. I'm the Senior Network Engineer at Overstock.com. I was sorry to hear that you're having trouble unsubscribing from our emailing lists. We are continually doing our best to make sure that the only people receiving our e-mails are those that actually want to receive them.
Long story short, if you've unsubscribed via our website, and you are still receiving e-mails (promoting the latest deals), please contact postmaster@overstock.com
As a further peace offering, to be absolutely certain you are no longer bothered by unwanted e-mails (from us), feel free to contact me directly at: jon@overstock.com. I'm offering you this address as a token of my sincerity.
Overstock, as a company, is opposed to SPAM. I, as an engineer and administrator, detest SPAM, so please believe me that I sincerely want to make sure that you're not getting pestered by unwanted e-mails (from us).
This offer stands for any of the rest of you loyal Slashdot readers. Overstock has some great deals to offer you, but if you don't want to hear about them, please let us know (you can unsubscribe on the website, or contact us via either e-mail addresses I've mentioned). Thanks for your patience. I look forward to hearing from you and serving you.
- Jon Fullmer
It is unfortunate that the IETF, or W3C, or some other democractic body who understands the issues can not be delegated the task of setting internet law. It should not be left to local or state level either, it is an international thing, it needs an international solution. Nevertheless, this is a good start.
In some places this is arguably covered by existing laws, for example in the UK the Data Protection Act might have some effect, but it also might criminalise the unfortunate person whose PC got infected with spyware and so disclosed someone else's personal data. That is why a uniform approach is vital.
That said, I always use Mozilla and have Pop-up ad blocking. Still, the law should not ban ads if consumers WANT the pop-ups from competitors to services that they are visiting. Overstock risks crossing the line and acting uncompetitively in a way that harms consumers and increases prices for everyone.