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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.
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.
That all depends on what operating system you use.
perfect example of "fax spamming" was discussed in a previous article
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.
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!
Also, it really isn't free speech if it costs people something is it (bandwidth, etc)?
True overall, but everything costs someone something. Especially in the day in age where time is just as precious (if not more so) as the green that comes in. Taking a protest to the streets corridors off that section of pavement that you have paid for and costs someone time in detouring. But the issue gets mucky as this is also right to assembly. Now if we detract time altogether and only demand it to be a tangible product, we might see how we might be able to beat 'round this African lilac and escape the issue entirely. Ah, if only simplicity existed and people could show compassion and patience for another. But no, it is about your rights, and your rights require to interfere with other's rights. It just isn't as pen and paper write the laws, which is also why you see an influx of laws and the practice of law in the day in age.
Recently I was reading a press release on some big item having to do with copyright or the like, and one notable CEO or another said that since there are no laws that exist saying you explicitly can, it means you are not able to (sorry, I can't remember where or who, you'll have to take my word for it :)). So if it is not explicitly written they were saying, there's no rights saying you necessarily can do it. I found that highly repulsive as I figured laws existed as restrictions, not being a mode of checking whether or not you can brush your teeth with so and so toothpaste. Extreme I know, but this has everything to do with freedom of speech. OK, maybe I'm pulling freedom of speech into freedom of use, but I think a slow integration of the two is on the rise, where it becomes impossible to even discuss the technology being used as can be readily seen within this era of the DMCA. Companies wish to do away with these rights because it makes everything a lot easier on them ... no lawsuits for poor products, only being able to be enforced by the government that "works" for the people.
It's a quiet emergence I fear the majority is not ready for. But then I can also readily see they will never be ready for it. Interesting to see how things will turn out regardless.
I don't give my real email address out to anyone other then bill companies (utilities, mortgage, student loans) and my family.
It is this reasoning that keeps me from getting any spam what so every on my work or home email addresses.
The only accounts I have spam issues with are my webmaster@domain.com addresses that I have for the four or five sites that I admin. Those poor bastards get a large treatment from Cloudmark's Spamnet utility located at www.cloudmark.com.(Excuse me for not linking it, I am just lazy)
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
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
You go there and register a name (say, august_zero@spamgourmet.com). Then, whenever you have to give out a displosable address, you make it string.n.august_zero@spamgourmet.com, where string is some unique string you'll use to remember this address and n is an integer ST 1 Far easier.
Agreed. I once sent a less than lauditory note to the LOP people who had installed their doubly-distilled, quadruply qualified and unmentionable (so ok, I read Doc Smith!) toolbar on my daughter's browser. Their response was "you agreed to it". Where? When? At no point did she click on a link that clearly indicated this would happen. Hate LOP. Hate, hate hate hate.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Some of those spy/adwares download themselves by minicking Windows message boxes, which I believe comes pretty darn close to fruad.
I actually seen one case where an IE window set to hide everything with the background color of blue opens up to make it look like you are experiencing BSOD. It also brings up another pop up window with a message in tune of "something is wrong with your computer and click on "Ok" to download a software to fix it". It looked like a real deal execpt for the fact that the popup window had the IE banner on it.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Anything that requires a third party application to remove is a virus (OS notwithstanding)
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.