Slashdot Mirror
FTC Bars Popup Backdoor Ads
zanderredux was one of several readers to note that the FTC has banned backdoor popups. This is the result of the D Squared case that we've heard a bit about in the past. The case also restricted them from sending IM ads as well.
This is really going to negatively affect my sex life. Will the FTC please get out of my bedroom, and keep their laws off my body while they're at it?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Boxing Equipment Reviews
This would be a victory if it were legitimate businesses that used such tactics, but it tends to be the questionable individuals who use this the most, so it really won't have much impact, I'm afraid.
It gets even worse when you consider the fact that US law has little effect on operations from other countries. So...
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Evidence:
Every major browser now blocks the web variety (including IE, thanks to XP SP2). Microsoft also finally decided disabling Messenger and adding a firewall to their operating system was a good idea. Pity it took them so long to realise this.
And now, just for good measure, they're illegal too.
I say, good riddance.
I was one of the team leaders on the Windows NT project, in fact my team was in charge of the Messenger service.
Nothing like watching an entire department power cycle their machine because they received
"An error has occured at 0x8000000C. Please reboot your system."
Ads were "an annoyance you have to deal with in a free society," lawyer Anthony J. Dain is quoted as saying.
Bearing in mind that advertising something on the TV or radio and crawling into someone's house through an open window and pinning a flyer on the fridge are not the same thing...
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
It's not about government control, it's about recourse. Without laws allowing you (either you personally, your company, or society as a whole) to punish offenders, you are powerless.
My computer is broadcasting an IP address, but without ads how will I be able to stop this?
You insensitive clods! We don't have an FTC....
But seriously, legislation in the US isn't going to stop the worldwide problem of popups and spam. What's needed is better *technical* solutions (like not having loopholes in IM clients for people like D Squared to exploit in the first place.
Although marketers regard pop-ups as one of the most effective ways of advertising online, many surfers find them hugely annoying.
Hmmm, what's the word I'm thinking of... Oh yeah... DUH! What I cannot believe is that marketing people think that popups are effective advertising! The only way they have to measure effectiveness is by click-throughs. Of course, many of these pop-up ads are graphically designed to be so misleading (looking like a window within a window, or a dialog box) that the general public will click the ad accidentally while trying to close it. All these accidental clicks apparently add up to a "successful advertising campaign" in the eyes of a marketing bobblehead.
Now, these guys using the windows messenger service can pop up a window that IS a dialog/messagebox, no matter what browser you use. Doesn't even matter if the browser is running, as long as you're connected to the internet (and running Windows). I'm glad that they're getting slapped.
On a related note, I wonder if Microsoft considered turning off the windows messenger service by default for SP2? Not sure what kinds of apps that would break, but it seems like it would be benefical to the majority of home users.
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
I've always found it ammusing when you see laws and rules for the Internet based on geographical location. The state of Iowa says that spam is illegal or China won't let you visit pages that bash China for example. We need a more permanant solution, and a common Internet law kind of thing.
I don't know, maybe that's a bad idea too.
You talk better than you fool!
er, no. RTFA. these guys were actually caught, put in court, found guilty, ordered to stop (and have), and will be monitored for the next 5 years.
this single ruling has had a huge effect already.
Free speech doesn't allow you to run protection rackets, so why this? It's the same thing, if you think about it: sending popups with a promise to stop if you're paid. The only differences are in degree and scale.
Not that this is going to do anything to prevent people from sending backdoor popups; nothing ever does. However, it does allow people to drop the hammer on those who continue this practice.
A few things:
"claiming it could send pop-ups to as many as 135,000 internet addresses each hour." Actually D squared = 250,000
A bunch of Tech Stuff
Ads were "an annoyance you have to deal with in a free society," lawyer Anthony J. Dain is quoted as saying."
Just as removal of your kneecaps with a cold chisel is an annoyance you're going to have to deal with shyster.
I hate pop-ups. As far as I'm concerned unless I _specifically_ open up something I don't want it buzzing me. Pop-ups are YOUR code running on MY computer without my authorisation. Under different circumstances that is a good way towards describing a worm.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
How am I going to know if I won a 3 free day trip to Hawaii for being the 82,711,365th visitor?
Not to mention X-10 softcore.
Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
a pop-up send via Windows Backdoor(tm), also known as Windows Messenger, a mostly useless service in XP that was set to default to on for some insanely stupid reason.
mostly useless? how else do you tell users your Microsoft Exchange server has crashed (again)? E-mail?
This is a fake victory for the FTC. First, the company (D Squared aka guilty slimeballs) who were doing this merely promissed not to do it again. Well, its a moot point anyway because Microsoft is closing the port/turrning off the service that allowed the ads in the first place. So they won't be able to send the ads anymore regardless of this "settlement". The guilty slimeballs do not have to pay any fines. So the message here is that despite the best efforts (? - not really) of the FTC, D Squared victimized hundreds of thousands of consumers and got away with absolutley no penalty and no admission of guilt. A real victory would have punished D Squared to the point of bankruptcy so as to deter future scum bags from exhotionate "business models"
You know, I'd rather live in a society where businesses were properly regulated so that they weren't able to abuse and harass individuals and society in general rather than one where they were allowed to do as they please.
Would you rather live in a country where food manufacturers could sell you contaminated foods, where chemical companies could poison the land that you live on, where oil companies could turn their backs on oil spills, or fill your mailbox with thousands of unwanted sales pitches? Or one where they couldn't literally get away with murder?
Remember, the only reason why regulation is necessary is because someone always abuses the system. If everyone could be trusted to act ethically then regulation wouldn't be needed, but everyone doesn't do that, do they?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
OK, I agree that SOME limited government regulation is required. Are you seriously comparing popup ads to a poisoned water supply or contaminated food?
This kind of idiotic regulation is what makes government grow and your taxes go up. Give it enough time and someone will create the technology to fix this with no government intervention. Less goverment is almost always good.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
Requesting clarification of
1 -- It is impossible to stop spam because US laws have no effect on other countries!!
2 -- US patent and copyright laws will stifle all humankind, because they are forced on or become de-facto standards in other countries!!
Please resolve contradiction and continue posting activity.
Thank you.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Now if they could just get rid of these 30 second pop-up ads that appear on my TV 4 or 5 at a time. Like, I'll be watching a movie, it'll get to a really good part, and then BAM!, 6 pop-ads about feminine products, male enhancement pills, etc.
The worst part is they seem to get more agressive towards the end of the movie. Once I saw like 15 pop-up ads before the cliff hanger ending last scene. When is the FTC going to outlaw this madness!?
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
You're still using bubble farts? Merge farts or quick farts are way faster.
I am very well likely re-stating the obvious here, but so incredible many people think that they're getting web browser popups it's sick.
"According to the FTC, the pop-ups sent by D Squared could appear even when a user was not actively web browsing."
No crap? All that does in the article is confuse the user. At one point in time, because the box is labeled "Messenger", the MSN messenger site said that they were "looking into claims of users using the Messenger Sevice for advertisments." It may still be on there, but I can't find it.
Am I the only one who's annoyed by people's ignorance?
Yeah, and so is my foot in your face, buddy.
Ads were "an annoyance you have to deal with in a free society," lawyer Anthony J. Dain is quoted as saying.
No.
Ads are an annoyance that you have to deal with in order to receive something else funded by those ads for free or cheaper than it would otherwise cost.
In this case, the pop-up ads were not subsidising anything else for the people that got them. They just appeared unwanted and unexpected. You expect ads on the TV, on the radio, on websites. In return you get free TV, free radio, free websites. What is the consumer gaining from these popup adverts.
Hell, even junk mail probably subsided the postal service, allowing stamps to be made a little cheaper.
The same theory should apply to spam. The recipient is not benefitting from the spam in any way. The spammers aren't subsidising their internet connection. It goes from Win-Win (free service for the consumer and products being presented to people for the company) to Win-Lose (products being presented to people, but nothing in return except a waste of time).
This would be a victory if ...
... in a straightjacket.
It's not a victory for technology, nor for freedom.
What we have here is an network facility that was implemented badly (ie. without default access controls), and instead of the manufacturers getting their wrists slapped by the user community for inept design, the courts are brought in and it's turned into yet another thing for the state to regulate.
It happens to be an MS problem in this case, but the issue is of much wider concern. You really don't want the state brought in when the problem is just a symptom arising from a technical fault. If you do, pretty soon the nanny state is tucking you up in bed every night
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Has anyone else noticed that humans get "3 strikes and you're out", "preventive detention", and various other ruthless criminal treatment, while corporations, with greater power to damage the public, get "monitored", and settle their suits with no precedent or remedies?
--
make install -not war
Somebody's sarcasm detector isn't working.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
I realize that this is going to be a really unpopular view, but hear me out.
My argument is that we institute legal processes to fix things only when we cannot fix them otherwise. For example, we have no way of keeping people from burning people's houses down, so we have the crime of "arson". If there was a simple spray for a house that made everything completely non-flammable, there'd be no reason to introduce the complexity and overhead of legalities.
The problem is that this is not an insoluable technical problem. (I don't think that *spam* is an insoluable technical problem either, but at least it's *harder* to solve.) It is very, very easy to stop boxes from ever popping up. Microsoft screwed up, and it'd be easy for them to provide a download from Windows Update that disables the Messenger service. Instead, they've chosen not to do so. This is an easy, easy fix. If people's computers were being *compromised* (so that by the time Microsoft's update came in, the computer was already controlled by a hacker, and nothing could be done), there would be a different issue. Pop-ups? Just disable the damned thing.
The same goes for instant messenger messages (though to a lesser extent). It is *extremely* difficult to try to slip ads past our existing messaging services, which are both (a) centralized, and (b) unencrypted. If IP Foo using account Bar is sending messages to a thousand different people in a day, something is very clearly quite dubious about that person.
I really, really, really do not think that the FTC should get involved. I can understand people being pissed off, but the person to be pissed off at is Microsoft in the case of Windows Messenger and the instant message provider in the case of the instant messaging. One of the fundamental things that you have to do when you design a system is make it reasonably unpromising to abusers. That was not done in either case. It's not something that requires intervention from the FTC (unless they want to make a statement about how people should complain to Microsoft/whatever instant messaging company is involved).
I could even see the FTC working with the industry to try to set up a mechanism for identifying people using their software that requires updates and notifying those people. But trying to stop advertising by going after one company at a time is pointless, and a waste of my tax dollars.
May we never see th
There seems to be some misunderstanding in this thread.
Please note that we are talking about the messenger service running under Windows, not the Windows Messenger IM program or web browser popup windows.