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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.
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?
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.
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...
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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.
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.
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.