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."

Comments

This happens more than you know

[demonic-halo]

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.

Where is that Adware being used?

[ImaLamer]

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.

Why expect so much from Capital One?

[AFCArchvile]

But the last straw came a year ago when the pop-ups began plugging such household names as J.C. Penney Co. and Capital One Financial Corp., companies McMann expected to know better.

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!