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Is Yahoo Actively Supporting Adware?
conq writes "According to BusinessWeek, a report said Yahoo was actively supporting the companies that spawn pop-up ads. In early September, Yahoo engineer Jeremy D. Zawodny sounded off on his blog: "Do I like those [software installation] practices? Hell no. It's insulting and disrespectful.""
update the story submission takes Jeremy out of context which he
blogs about and says mean things about us.
Yahoo has been doing something like this for quite some time. Many years ago, Yahoo was the place to go to find the best price on products you could purchase over the net. However, they evolved into a search that only showed the prices from businesses that had a relationship with Yahoo. Mind you, they still claimed to find the best price on the web but in truth they only included companies with an arrangement with Yahoo (and those companies rarely had the lowest price) It may be business, but it's not trustworthy. So for me Yahoo lost my trust years ago. Now they are just one source for information and no more trustworthy than the next source.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Google's fired people for comments about the company, will yahoo?
Believe me, if I started murdering people, there would be none of you left.
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/005121.htm l
What popups?
I use Mozilla and selected privacy options.
Yahoo is doing other evil stuff as well:
Evil is yahoo becoming?
Yeah, I installed the Yahoo! Toolbar the other day and ended up with the Adobe Reader on my computer.
What the?!?!?
...I load up Slashdot, see this story briefly, only to have the Network Solutions banner at the top expand into an ad that takes up about 1/4 of the browser window on mouseover, thus covering it up.
"Yahoo Chief Operating Officer Daniel L. Rosensweig insists the company has the highest standards. "Users can put their trust in us because that is what we're built on," he says."
What Rosenzweig fails to mention is that Yahoo, like most companies, will take advantage of that trust to the furthest extent they can get away with.
Trust us because we say our foundation is trust? I don't think so.
How about "Trust us because we take steps to prevent adware, not support it."
Or, "Trust us because we will never piggyback software and settings changes onto downloads from us that you choose to install."
Or, "Trust us because it's not in our financial interest to do bad things to you."
Unfortunately, none of these three possibilities are true... and until they are, I will not trust Yahoo farther than I can throw them.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I work for a company that produces an Anti-Spyware product that got bitch-slapped in court some time back by Gator for calling Gator Spyware. Now...WE all know what Spyware is. They know what Spyware is, but (and please, correct me if I'm wrong, because I might be) until a court of law legally defines Spyware, it seems to me that YAHOO and everyone else can load your machine up without an ounce of legal liability.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
He didn't have the $150 to buy the vowel. Damn you Pat Sajak
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
Over the years, I have learned to have zero (0) trust in Yahoo.
From the Business Week article:
"Sure, no one issue will turn off Yahoo users in droves." One issue will definitely convince a large percentage of people never to visit Yahoo.
Another quote:
"... Yahoo risks tarnishing its reputation as a trustworthy Net player." Notice that doing an internet search is called "Googling". For knowledgeable people, Yahoo has a bad reputation. For others, Yahoo has no reputation at all.
Business writers write a lot of DISGUSTING nonsense about computer technology:
"To Yahoo's credit, it is leading industrywide discussions aimed at devising new practices for the adware companies." Here's another quote: "Yahoo also insists it does business only with adware companies that adhere to best practices..."
It seems to me that Yahoo cannot compete, so it is trying every trick to stay alive.
Not real news: AOL and Yahoo and MSN will merge. The combined company will be called CyberHell.
Yahoo risks tarnishing their reputation by turning over e-mail accounts of dissidents to the mainland Chinese government. Compared to that, adware is nothing.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Well, that should have been a lesson. It is not "Spyware", it is "Fucking Goddamn Crapware". You got to be accurate when you talk about these things...
Oh well, what the hell...
Are the editors actively supporting spell checkers?
I'm joking!
...or maybe not.
So it seems that the question which Yahoo must ask themselves is this: Does the revenue from all those adware related pop-ups (which I believe -- correct me if I'm wrong -- are consistently seeing fewer click-throughs) outweigh the potential revenue from people actually surfing to the Yahoo portal sites?
They have nothing to tangible sell. The only way for them to make money is to sell data they've garnered and they users who they garnered it from.
Just to point out, you're treading on very thin ice there lad. There is a very popular search engine company who sell some search appliances but whose major revenue stream comes from the sale of targeted advertisements. Targeted? How?
Every time you visit one of this company's pages, you'll get a unique cookie (if you haven't already got one), that won't expire until 2038, and your search terms are logged with datestamp, IP address, User-Agent and, of course, your identification number from that unique, immortal cookie. Not even the CIA could get away with this.
Now look, people tell search engines things that they wouldn't tell their closest friends and relatives. This is a hostile invasion of privacy - or, at least, will become one.
This is precisely the same information that, as you say, Yahoo! garners from its users to sell for profit. Not to say you failed to see the similarity, it's just that people seem to love this company and won't hold it to the same standards that they would expect of others. Classic hypocrisy.
How Yahoo Funds Spyware
I post screenshots and packet logs showing how Yahoo ads get syndicated into notorious spyware -- Direct Revenue, eXact Advertising, 180solutions, and some smaller players too (SideFind, Slotchbar, etc.).
"Don't be evil" ring a bell? Everyone pretty much "believed" the head honcos at google when they declared that was the company's motto.
Dow's motto is "We Bring Good Things to Life", except they purchased Union Carbide after Union Carbide killed tens of thousands of Indian people when a chemical plant in Bhopal released methyl isocyanate.
Last time I mentioned Bhopal and Dow, someone said "hey, that was Union Carbide, not Dow! Dow just bought them!" Well- Dow management and shareholders didn't seem to have much trouble sleeping at night after buying Union Carbide for a song (Union Carbide after the disaster became next to worthless as a brand.) Dow pretty much turned into a industrial-disaster profiteer.
Please help metamoderate.
Employees indulging in spontaneous honesty is never good for business. They should fire him and have a court slap an injunction on him that forbids him from talking about the injunction.
Just look what happened when it was pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes. It destroyed an entire textile industry, embarrassed the nation, and undermined confidence in hucksters *ahem* businessmen with innovative revenue models. We can't undermine the economy in these fragile times! WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA????
Yahoo's engineers and marketers have already had their first stab at ruining Flickr, the wonderful photo-sharing website. The simple, friendly, three-question signup that worked so well before has been turned into a ghastly Yahoo ID signup process that includes the usual corporate interrogation and other goofiness spread across multiple pages and redirects.
f rom_human_to_droid_in_a_yahoo_moment.php
Just wait till the rest of Flickr gets the Yahoo treatment.
http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/flickr_signup_
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Yahoo OWNS Intermix through Overture who has lost some massive court cases involving spyware. So this is no real surprise. Intermix was ordered to pay 7.5 Million in a seattle case. http://www.technewsworld.com/story/43894.html
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
"...respecting the customer..." I'm sure they do respect their customers. The mistake is in thinking that the users of their free services are Yahoo!'s customers. They aren't. They're the product. The adverstisers, or perhaps piggybacking software companies, are the customers. The free service is the means used to produce Yahoo!'s primary product: eyeballs.
Sorry, I'm a writer. That makes you raw material.
A common scenario would be a user clicking 'Ok' on an EULA which somewhere, buried in a heap of legal speak, mentions "includes <insert favorite crapware here> from <insert favorite crapware company here>". Whatever happens next, that user did agree to installation of this crapware, and could have know about it before installing (if he/she would bother to read the EULA).
I guess what makes this legally a gray area is the 'bundling' aspect. If user agrees to install A, and B comes bundled with A, did user agree to install B as well, or not? What if B is regarded as an essential component of A (not as a separate item B)? What if B is one very small part of a large software suite A? Does it need mentioning at all in that case? How about software that upgrades itself to include new 'functionality'? Very tricky all this.
If not bundled (like installed through a browser vulnerability), it's not much different from installing a rootkit on someone else's machine. Without user approval, THAT is very much illegal where I live (comparable to cracking systems). YMMV, but ofcourse these things are very, very difficult to prove in court.
Maybe that Gator thingie of yours looked like spyware but did get mentioned in an EULA that users had to click through ('upgrading' it to adware)?I really, really doubt the police in China told Yahoo what the investigation was about; you know, police are like that. They just demand information, and the law compels you to obey.
Perhaps we should have a trade embargo against China? That is, logically, the only way to go following your logic. If you operate in China, you have to follow the law. If you don't follow the law, you can't operate in China. The law, in your opinion(and mine too, certainly), violates the peoples' civil rights.
So, how about we stop all trade with China. Seems to be working just wonderfully for the people in Cuba...
Look, Yahoo isn't personally accountable for the actions of the Chinese government. The authorities demanded information and Yahoo obeyed the law. Did they even know what the investigation was about? It's not like the executives at Yahoo said, "No let's see. Who's civil rights can we violate today?" Give us a fucking break.
This is a political matter that deserves attention. When we have some politicians that aren't mouth breathing shit eaters, maybe it can be properly addressed. And perhaps when we damand the same of ourselves that we demand of others, we won't look like fucking hypocrites.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Great article, it almost got the context of Zawodny's comments correct. In his post he was talking about the bundling of the Yahoo Search Toolbar with other Yahoo products. Adware was not mentioned once. http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/005121.htm l
Anything that grows in your garden, but that you did not plant is a weed. Anything on your computer that you did not install by an informed, deliberate action is illegally-installed software.
.....
However, just because it's illegal, doesn't stop people doing it. Lots of people transport beneficial plant products across imaginary lines; this is against the law in many countries, but enough of them are getting away with it for it to be worthwhile.
Windows fanboys bitch about it being "complicated" or "awkward" to install software on GNU/Linux, but it is that way for a reason. Yes, you have to open an xterm and type something like apt-get install packagename. One little command. It downloads the software {from an independently-verified repository -- one more layer of safety}, installs it system-wide and updates the menus for all your window managers {if you use more than one}. And frankly, I don't see how this is any more counter-intuitive than having to click twice in rapid succession on an application icon to launch it
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Speaking of Yahoo Toolbar, I specifically deselected it the last time I installed Yahoo Instant Messenger.
Imagine my surprise the next time I popped into Internet Explorer to check something and a pop-up window didn't fire. Yahoo Toolbar had in fact been installed without my permission, and better yet didn't default to being one of the visible IE toolbars. Had I been, say, my parents, I would never figured out why the hell the Interwebs wasn't working.
An invisible toolbar I specifically requested not be installed silently blocking pop-up windows? That's awesome! I wish I had the foresight to make my software that great!
It makes me laugh when people like Ken "The Incredible Internet Guy" Leebow spout off about how great Yahoo is and how they should make more software and hardware. I can see it now... "Listen to music on your new Y!Pod, featuring Flash advertisements between every song!"
Retch.
It'll be easy to avoid the Google viruses though, just never install anything you find on http://virus.google.com/ especially if it's out of Beta version.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Not sure if anyone noticed, but Jeremy Zawodny made some comments about these /. discussions in his blog, claiming that his words were twisted: Slashdot Twists My Words about Yahoo