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Major Advertisers Caught In Spyware Net
theodp writes "BW reports on Fortune 500 companies' use of adware - Sprint for its PCS phones, major banks peddling Visa cards, Sony and retailers including Circuit City. And Mercedes-Benz before the company, fielding complaints, put on the brakes. So far, law enforcement has mostly targeted the transmitters, but NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is threatening to hold accountable household-name advertisers that use adware networks. No longer, says Spitzer, can companies play dumb."
And people tell me that I am wrong for blocking all ads and javascript. All cookies get flushed on exit. The internet was forever changed for the worse when commercial interests moved in. It was only a matter of time befor the seduction of easily available consumer tracking got the best of even so called respectable companies. Mod this poster +5 tin-foil hat. But at least it's better than being +5 asshat advertiser or +5 sucker with spyware riddled pc.
My humor is probably your flamebait
This happened to our company numrous times. We use a variety of advertising agencies like comission junction, doubleclick.com, etc... We basically don't really know what they're doing most of the time, we just give them a tracking code and a URL to lead customers and calculate how many leads per $$$ they generate.
Alot of the times, many of these sites like Comission Junction, just empowers members to post our links whereever. They just take our links, add their tracking code and URL to it, and give them to their members to include on their website. These members sometimes will result in dubious behavior to generate hits, and will often use ways to force the links on you. I'm sure you probably see those "Free" something that tell you to click on a dozen link before they send you the free iPod or something, then afterwards, find some trick to get out of sending you that iPod. Others sometimes use adware and other malicous software methods.
Sometimes we see certain agencies generate such good results, we give them even more money. We don't realize they're doing wrong until we start getting complaints. I've witness things such as our ads being included in adware (like Gator), porn sites, spam mail, chat bots, etc...
It's really hard to hard to control the means our ads get distributed using 3rd party agencies. But we're sort of forced to rely on them since we're a small company with little know how in advertising. It's much easier to pay other people do the work and focus on developing a good product.
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ITS ABOUT F***ING TIME! Companies have a responsability to know who they're dealing with, and not plead "willful ignorance". Its the same mrally, ethically, and legally as you buying a new computer for ten cents on the dollar from some guy who sells them out of his trunk.
In this case, I for one welcome our new attorney-general overlords!
:) It just seems that it is always him, and his people taking a stand and going after things with a clear sense of right and wrong, concerning matters of corperate abuse.
Or atleast he's the only one who gets press when doing so. Either way.. Go get em Spitzer.
Considering the software that often uses bundled adware and spyware is questionable at best (Kazaa at one time, other - more bogus - P2P software bundles) I wonder how much these Fortune 500 companies have funded even dirtier scams.
You know someone who has clicked a "free screensaver" or "system performance" pop-up before only to get trojans and adware. Does Circuit City endorse these scams on user intelligence? [Oxymoron I know]
Let's not even mention Compaq who bundles WeatherBug on their new machines!
Is it always going to be "us" versus the corporations? And why do I feel more libertarian and less "liberal" everyday?
I guess the solution is simple - start a list of people to boycott based on their aggressive advertising.
Get your Unix fortune now!
So this person expects Capital One, a company known for making the corniest commercials on TV, and a participant in the national scheme pushing limitless interest rates and exorbitant fees, to not engage in adware? I'd expect Capital One to be one of the FIRST and BIGGEST users of adware, popups, and direct marketing.
They put David Spade on our television screens two years longer than necessary; that alone is evil enough!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I'd guess this'll be a settlement, too. Spitzer will get publicity, NY State will get some money, but very little in terms of actual penalties will be imposed.
Please, for the love of God, no more car analogies.
You don't get it.
CASH is virtually untracable. A few thousand to do an ad campaign is easily hidden in accounting records and the transaction is not going to be recorded by the bank.
You just don't know how fraud and scams work.
For the love of God, please mod this person down.
/. with the Christmas lights that could be operated via the Net (HOAX, btw) he has posted pointless comments in every thread he can, just to drive up hits on his site.
Ever since he trolled
Just ignore the freak, and maybe he'll go away.
It is much harder to trace the source of the ads themselves.
No it is not. Follow the money trail. Search warrants and subpoenas on bank records, etc.
Money talks, and in this case it leads law enforcement right to the doorstep of the exact source responsible for the ads.
Someone has to pay the transmitters after all. They don't work for free.
but very little in terms of actual penalties will be imposed.
So you are saying that these guys don't view losing gobs of money as an actual penalty?
Don't forget that Spitzer also has a knack of driving down the stock price of the companies he goes after, so these guys are getting hit personally too.
This is really no different than the widely-ignored anti-fax laws.
The laws on the books state prohibit a company sending faxes to someone who explicitly tells you not to.
Yet we get deluged with hundreds of spam faxes a week. Over and over and over from the same companies. Many with blocked or deliberately falsified caller ID.
Law enforcement doesn't stop junk faxers, I don't see why it will stop spammers.
Generally speaking, the reason to collect evidence like this is to create opportunities to collect further evidence. It's a lot easier to say "We need all records of all emails and payments made to J. Blogs of XYZ Corp as we believe he was used to funnel money to SpamBeEverywhere Inc in return for advertising, according to this sworn statement by the CEO of SpamBeEverywhere Inc" to a judge and get a warrant than it is to say "Er, we need, well, all emails ever sent in the last year and all records of all payments made to anyone by XYZ Corp because we know SpamBeEverywhere Inc showed their ads."
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
'Plausible deniablity' doesn't mean quite what it sounds like in that quote -- in this case, 'plausible deniability' means a situation specifically set up so that any denial is 'plausible', Mr. King is not making any claims on the actual plausibility of their claims.
Here's another example, said on Slashdot occasionally: "I run an open WiFi network so that I can have plausible deniability for everything that goes across my Internet connection".
The rabbit hole goes much deeper than that, if you look at ad syndication, what 'don't be evil' Google is doing, etc. Excellent reference at:
http://www.benedelman.org/
--dungeness