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Who Invests in Spyware Companies?
NW writes "Ben Edelman just published a list of major investors in spyware companies totaling over $139 million in venture capital." Slashdot has not verified Edelman's information, and please note that harassing the receptionist at these places is unlikely to cause any change in their investment policies.
"please note that harassing the receptionist at these places is unlikely to cause any change in their investment policies"
No, but harrassing the *board* members might. That's why I love the SEC's EDGAR search. Names, and in name cases, phone numbers, for company board members.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
"please note that harassing the receptionist at these places is unlikely to cause any change in their investment policies."
Don't know about that. Harassing us on an inhuman scale appears to be working for them. Frankly, harassing them back, within the limits of the law of course, probably would be quite helpful. Many lobbysts and activists do far more about much less, and achieve considerable success.
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And as if it weren't fairly obvious these days, many "spyware removal" companies are also likely to be partners with these spyware companies.
There was a particularly nasty adware on my brother's PC once, and during my time trying to see where it came from, I happened to click on one of the ads, which boasted to help you "get rid of spyware and adware". The ad took me to a generic "search engine" page, filled with spyware/adware "removal" programs.
But did I see things like Ad-Aware or Spybot listed? Why hell no. I saw a bunch of removal programs which I had never ever heard of in my life. And yes, they cost money.
So answer me this; why would a piece of adware give you an advertisement on how to remove adware, unless the companies that sell you the removal software are in on it too?
And you know that the companies know they're showing up on these adware "search engines", because there are referrer ID's in the urls. After confronting a company about it with my brother's infested PC, they of course pretended to know nothing about it. I find it very hard to believe that they could have a referrer ID from an adware search engine, and it be total coincidence.
So yes, I'm 100% convinced that many adware companies are allied with adware removal ones, if they aren't in fact one in the same many times. Just think of how many people actually end up clicking those ads and buying that software, just because they don't know any better.
Since adware companies are basically virus writers, with ads as their payloads, we can only hope that more laws will start to pop up to nip it in the bud. But in the meantime, perhaps Ad-Aware or Spybot can strike up some deal with vendors (if they haven't already) to include their software with machines. At least until Microsoft's adware removal tool starts shipping with Windows.