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No Honor Among Malware Purveyors
metalion writes "True to the saying 'no honor among thieves,' adware company, Avenue Media, is finding that competing adware company, DirectRevenue, is detecting and deleting their software. Now Avenue Media is crying foul and have filed a lawsuit against DirectRevenue stating that DirectRevenue 'knowingly and with intent to defraud, exceeded its authorized access to users' computers.' DirectRevenue acknowledges that it may uninstall competing applications in its user license agreement. A researcher at Harvard University, Ben Edelman, reasons that 'Once the computer is infected with 10 different unwanted programs, the person is likely to take some action to address the situation.' Just how far will adware companies go to continue to attempt to bombard us with their ads?"
" Just how far will adware companies go to continue to attempt to bombard us with their ads?""
When ads are burned into BIOSes.
We should require by law that when a spyware application installs itself, it must uninstall another spyware application without damaging the host system, and further that it put itself into add/remove programs. Then we should just shoot the bastards that don't comply. Oughta solve the malware problem...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That way, competition would again benefit us, the regular consumer.
:)
Personally, ad/malware is one of the rare reasons I would encourage less strict weapon laws...
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
If they succed with the lawsuit against DirectRevenu , what does that mean for software like ad-aware?
Or even worse... Thieves breaking into houses and injuring themselves, only to sue the homeowner they were originally trying to steal from.
I remember the 6 o'clock news reporting on a guy who tried to steal from a Chinese restaurant by crawling through the kitchen's exhaust at the top of the building. Unfortunately for him, he landed on a stove that was left on at the end of the day. And of course, the very next week he was suing for the injuries he had sustained as a result of his illegal activities. Don't know what the outcome was. Go figure.
Off topic, I know. But my face gets red with anger each time I think of either scenario.
Barring use of some Windows based Spyware prevention tools (most of which aren't free for corporate use), mirgating to some combination of Mac OS X and Linux would end virtually all of this and then I could charge them for stuff like implementing cool new tools for them to use instead of upkeep of a broken system. Of course, these are the same customers who won't try FireFox because it "just doesn't feel right"???
I'm truly torn between my ethics and the need to keep up my income in a crap economy.
Every adware/spyware company complains about their competitors. Each company always claims they are legitimate and that users love their software. It's always the "other guy" that is a sleazeball and giving the "contextual advertising" business a bad name.
Users are sued for deleting malware off their computer? where do you go from here?
IANAL, but this is /. :P
Most 1st world legal systems (not sure whether the U.S. qualifies any more) have a "fine print" legal exemption - you can't put something onerous into an agreement and then try and hide it via tactics like fine print, or clicking through 76 pages, etc. Such clauses can be invalidated in the court.
Basically, you can't put stuff in the fine print that a "reasonable" person wouldn't expect to be agreeing to in the context of the agreement being reached.
Just how far will adware companies go to continue to attempt to bombard us with their ads?
I remember reading this short story once about an ad-infested world where there were ads on every available surface. On your toilet paper, on your pancakes, on every square inch of wall, *everywhere*. One image was the protagonist attempting to shave (with difficulty) by looking through a letter "O" on his mirror. He finally gets fed up and he meets a woman who offers him a secret place to go to get away from ads for a few hours at a time. The twist was that the tiny one-room ad-free apartment was actually a government-run re-education facility to brainwash "ad-hating dissidents" to start accepting ads again.
Anyone know this story or remember the name? Now that us TiVo people are considered TV thieves, I'm starting to feel the story to be prophectic.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
I think the reason that EULAs get away with that nonsense is that people are used to just clicking on them and the general impression is that they aren't terribly legally binding.
u s things you get at the ski slopes are highly questionable.
Imagine that whenever you went to the grocery store you were handed a 12 page contract at the checkouts - every time. Imagine that you had to sign a 27 page document every time you bought gas. Imagine having your babysitter and yourself exchange 107 page contracts every time you went out to dinner.
Contracts are great for their intended purpose - outlining rights and responsiblities in major transactions (your house, your car). They work best when you're talking about tangible things, or clearly defined services. Things are already getting murky when you start talking employment contracts and non-disclosure agreements. The standard we-can-kill-your-entire-family-and-you-can't-sue-
What is the point in having all these one-sided contracts for every possible action under the sun?
Perhaps there should be a law that all contracts are reviewed for fairness by a state attourney. There would be a fee of about $100 for every contract that is executed - this can be split by the parties however they feel is fair. Something like this wouldn't be a big deal for a house sale (gosh, most areas charge 1% plus a bundle of other fees). On the other hand, if MS had to send the state $100 for every windows installation, they'd think twice about those contracts. Ditto for the million other documents that serve no purpose.
Standard forms of business that have standard disclaimers should be covered by state law - such as a law stating what ski-lift operators are and are not responsible for. If they want to use a non-standard set of disclaimers, fine, but fork over $100 per customer. The state bears all the litigation costs when the contract is disputed - this lets them approve the contract before there is anything to argue over.
I wonder if a concept like this could actually work?
In trying to clean a laptop yesterday I used Ad-Aware SE. At the end of its scanning process it allows you to select what to remove. When I got to this point one of the malwares took control of Ad-Aware quickly and added itself to the ignore list. I found this quite amazing. Part of the ignore was some of CWS, but there were other things there as well. I was able to scan again and remove the ignores. This new trend is mildly disturbing.
Hoyty
Windows itself isn't too bad if you are behind a firewall. I have several WinXP machines behind a simple NAT firewall and I have never had a problem. Simply keep it patched, Substitute IE/Outlook/Office for Mozilla/OpenOffice.org and you are good to go.
I have been running this for 3 years and every time I run a virus scan, it always comes back negative. It's nice because I don't need to pay the Symantec-McAffee tax every year. People always ask me whay virus program I use and they are very puzzled when I say "I don't need one".
Mozilla/OpenOffice need a retail box to put on the shelves in the antivirus section at BestCircuitDepotUSA, along with a little common sense about Internet useage on the back of the box.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
IANAL, but the easiest defence to this lawsuit is to prove that the plantif has been deceiving users into installing their software, and have been doing illegal activities.
Of course that also might incriminate the defendant. But you can't sue for damages over an illegal activity.
Let's hope they get a judge who's had a computer taken over by spyware / adware...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
In about 1995 I worked for a telemarketer. Yeah, I know. Anyway, I sat in a meeting once with some people from a trendy ad agency. They said one of the best ways to market things on the Internet was to visit newsgroups and message boards (what we now call blogs), and ask a question as one user, then provide the answer as another. The answer, of course, would advertize Our Fine Product.
I told them that was lying, and that it was wrong. They looked at me blankly. I may as well have been speaking Latin. I then explained a bit about Internete culture, and the negative feedback of spamming newsgroups. That, they could comprehend, but they didn't think I knew what I was talking about. Their model worked - and it wasn't lying, it was just business.
The mindset of people who spam, sell banner ads, use covert marketing, and advertize on Channel One is (to overgeneralize): whatever it takes to make money.
It doesn't matter what is "right" or "wrong" - rightness and wrongness are a matter of degree, and that degree is measured by a cost-benefit equation. If the
(likely revenue) > X% + sum of (potential costs * likelihood of each)
that's good and "right", otherwise it's bad and "wrong". 'X' represents the amount of margin you could make off some other investment.
The thing that distinguishes telemarketers and spammers is that negative feedback from non-customers doesn't bother them.
sigs, as if you care.
Somebody flunked biology class. A real parasite is not benign to the host. That sounds like a symbiote. Parasites by their nature take the resources from a host for their own. When was the last time you saw someone with a tapeworm that had no symptoms? How about ameobic dysentery? Does that sound like benign? Perhaps Giardia Lamblia? No? They cause severe disturbances to the host including fevers, bleeding, diarrhea and vomiting. Check your info.
The EULA is pivotal. Because of their EULA Direct Revenue can say they removed AvenueMedia's software with the users consent. For AvenueMedia to have a leg to stand on, they first have to prove that click-through EULAs aren't valid. Otherwise, Direct Revenue has a strong arguement that their software is just doing what the user told it to.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I've wondered for years when someone would write the first true 'genetic algorithim' based worm/virus. It would be a fantastic and alternately, horrible landmark in computer science.
However, there is no point in designing a fitness evaluation. In real natural processes, the fitness evaluation is competition for resources. The only reason why it has to be introduced into modeled simulations is that there is no real competition in a model unless you include it. The real fitness evaluator of a virus is how easily it can spread, how hard it is to detect, and how difficult it is to remove.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I believe this would be called "Mutually Assured Deletion," and it would give us hope that someone will finally remember that the only winning move is not to play.
::jafomatic
Avenue Media is claiming "tortious interference with contract" on the grounds that DirectMedia is interfering with their contractual relationships with their customers. This is in addition to their Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim. The rationale, presumably, is that if they can show some kind of illegal act under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, their "tortious interference" claim might go somewhere.
Some anti-spyware group might want to file a friend-of-the-court brief. The best possible ruling would be that both parties are violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and therefore DirectMedia cannot claim to come to court with clean hands.
True, it is more tricky than some programs to remove, but if you are able to figure out how to set up Linux, you are certainly smart enough to go google on how to remove it from start up. I don't really understand your concept of a firewall. Make it so tight that you can't even get on Internet? What kind of piss poor firewall are you using. Most firewalls allow you to block based on application. The notice pops up that messenger is trying to access the net, you say deny, tell it to remember that setting, you are done. Amazing, I still have Internet access.
As far as never knowing because Windows is proprietary...that's a load of bullshit too. Stick a sniffer in between your box and the net. An old PC with Linux and ethereal installed will do. Watch the traffic. There is no way that they can hide anything proprietary or open source. So when was the last time you read through the whole kernel to make sure it was doing what you expected it to do?
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
... it would give us hope that someone will finally remember that the only winning move is not to play.
Unfortunately, the effect of this was demoed nearly a decade ago, by none other than Microsoft, who has never been punished for their actions.
When the first version of Windows Media Player came out, all the reviewers reported that after they'd tested it, they found all their other audio software was dead and had to be re-installed. And if they left any piece of WMP in their machine, any time it ran, all the non-MS audio software would again die and you'd have to reinstall it.
My wife found out about this the hard way. She had some nice audio software. Then she installed some financial software (not from Microsoft). It silently installed WMP as a "bonus". All her quality audio software was broken. She reinstalled, but eventually gave up, because neither of us could figure out how to uninstall WMP. And it eventually developed an even more annoying behavior: When you started upsome audio using a high-quality player, WMP would start up in parallel. The two renditions would both come out of the speakers, out of sync by a couple seconds.
She's now a very happy Mac user. She gave me her Windows box, and it's mostly turned off, except when I need to test something (mostly web pages) against Windows software.
Anyway, in such cases "not to play" means you don't even try to sell your software to Windows users. It doesn't matter whether you were a good guy and cooperated with the others. WMP will kill you anyway.
I know a number of audio-software developers who have become rather depressed by this. They can get put on MS's "good guys" list, of course, by selling the control of their software to MS. But they seem to have this silly idea that they should be able to build and sell their own software.
There's really no reason that the spy/malware folks should ever stop shooting down other software. The only real solution is to keep their software out entirely. Or maybe jail them. I wouldn't think you'd need any new laws. Vandalism is already illegal everywhere. But such laws aren't enforced for software.
I wonder if a vandalism charge could be successful against WMP?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I hope you're joking. The AG's office would be overloaded with a backlog of contracts to "be reviewed" because company XYZ just modified the terms of Widget X. I take offense to the fact that you don't believe people aren't able to determine what is or is not "fair". Wouldn't you agree that a more pragmatic approach is to say a the parties involved decide what or is not fair? You don't like the terms, don't buy it.
The fact of the matter is that most people don't like those one-sided agreements. However, they have become standard practice because of the various economies of limited-supply industries. If you want to go skiing there are probably at most ten places to do so in most normal areas. You won't find any variety in the disclaimers they make you sign (probably because they're all insured by the same company).
Car manufacturers would do the same thing if it weren't for lemon laws. Every industry would like to get rid of liability for the products they sell. Consumers generally don't have much power here, and laws have generally given them the leverage they've needed in the past.
As far as the AG's office being backlogged - I doubt this would happen:
First, the fees would be designed to cover most of the costs of the review, so they could hire more attourneys for this purpose. (It doesn't have to cover all of it, the state is already saving tons of money by heading up litigation in advance - murcky contracts would never get signed in the first place.)
Second, the fees would eliminate most of the contracts you sign these days. Where right now you waive 1400 separate rights every time you get a grocery discount store, in the future they might just hand you their privacy policy, and that's it. If they don't write a contract, then there is no fee to pay. Standard law and the precedence set in the courts would become the equitable standard for how business is conducted. Once upon a time that is probably how it all worked - I doubt that George Washington had to sign an agreement to get fair prices at the local butcher's shop. He probably didn't even sign an agreement when he bought a horse. Maybe when he bought a house, but probably not when he had somebody fix the roof on it.
My feeling is that the average person should be able to recall every binding document they've ever signed if they think hard enough. I couldn't remember all the trivial ones I've signed in the last six months. And I certainly didn't read them all completely first before signing them!
By getting rid of the garbage, the few real contracts that remain will be seriously negotiated and well-considered. That should reduce litigation overall. And it gives power to the average consumer over the company that forces you give up your right to sue to do business with them.