180 Solutions Cuts Back on Spyware Installs

An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com is reporting that adware purveyor 180Solutions has finally decided to stop letting third-party companies install their programs for commission without 180's approval. The story says 180 announced the move after pressure from public interest groups who threatened to file a formal complaint with regulators at the Federal Trade Commission."

Comments

Please

[temojen]

File anyways.

Somehow I doubt getting approval will be very hard

[Clockwurk]

What good is peddling scumware if you can't get ppl to bundle it?

They Should be in Jail

[PingXao]

So they get to continue pushing their crap and the only difference is that the CSO - Chief Sleaze Officer - must personally approve every payload turd. Fantastic. They need to be shut down, not threatened with a slap on the wrist.

Bad for digiticians!

[Douglas Simmons]

Hey, I'm as glad as the next guy to kick spyware writers in the teeth, but we the slashdot readers are a group most densely than any other made up of people who are paid good cash money (sometimes sex!) to clean this crap out of people's computers. Just as Microsoft is capitalizing like a mafia on protection from viruses for money, a market created from writing crappy operating systems, we the slashdot lobby should push for "free speech" rights of the malware industry.

Too little...

[redheaded_stepchild]

...so horribly, horribly late. Do these impotent bastards actually think this is going to make people *want* to use their software, or are they just trying for some positive PR spin? I can think of a lot of other ways clients have gotten 180Solutions' junk on their machines, and IST was only the most voracious. Let's not forget this has been going on for a few years now, too. Did they never see ISTbar installed on their own machines? That would be kinda funny, now that I think on it.

Re:Too little...

[rholliday]

It can work. Remember that we're dealing with the general public here. We as technicians know spyware companies' names by heart because we deal with them hand's-on. The end user just knows "it was slow and had popups" and we subsequently "fixed it."

Example: eAnthology/eAcceleration/Stop Sign, etc. I remember removing tons of their spyware apps. Now they advertise on national television for their Anti-Virus packages, claiming to "make it faster than the day you got it." Did they clean up their act? I have no idea, frankly. But I know people are buying it.

Re:Why threaten anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother threatening anything? Why not just file the complaint?

...asks he of infinite resources.

Let this company die

[bhav2007]

Comanies like this make my blood boil. I am planning to be a CS major in college, and I just can't understand how anyone could willingly work to make this kind of product. Have they actually fooled themselves into believing that one of their toolbars is helping people? I couldn't. It flattens me that someone could go on working to create something which is completely useless and harmful. I can only conclude that whoever is working at these companies must either be starvingly desperate for work or just hateful. Maybe that is where bad programmers go when they die. "Welcome to hell, now you will be forced to create spyware for all of eternity! Mwahahahahaha!". Also, why exactly should we care if this company is "turning around"? There are plenty of struggling software companies which haven't infected anyone. It seems pretty much impossible that one of these establishments could ever produce something useful. Do programmers have any kind of vigilante justice? ;)

Re:Let this company die

[heelios]

You do raise a point there, I always wondered how spyware *companies* were hiring people to write their crap.

The most obvious possiblity, I believe, is that they pay script-kiddies or teenagers to write their crap.

Re:Let this company die

[cybergrunt69]

Have they actually fooled themselves into believing that one of their toolbars is helping people?

Um, nope! Do spammers really think that the V14GR@ ads are going to appeal to someone? NOPE! There is one reason that they let this type of stuff happen - money

Most the the spyware crap that's installed has an almost interesting feature, but it's main purpose is to gather information. The most ethical of these just wants to see what websites you visit as well as a number of other metrics; less ethical will change system settings (home pages, etc) and possibly collect personal info and keystrokes. All of this info is sent 'home' so they can use the info in their advertising, or sell the info to advertising peoples.

It's not about helping people, it's about gathering info from the masses, and using it to make a buck.

OK boys and girls, make sure your tinfoil hats are on tight. The next step is where they partner with Microsoft, AdAware, and SpyBot. Once they've said they don't bundle spyware, they will fight to get on the automatic exclusion lists, thus not having their data deleted. They won't really stop all spyware installations, they'll just have fewer higher-paying spyware inclusions...

re: free speech for malware authors?

[King_TJ]

What a crappy attitude! You're comment makes you look like an embarassment to I.T. I do get paid good money to clean up spyware/malware problems as part of my job. I do on-site PC service and consulting for a living. But like I tell lots of customers, I'd *much* rather being doing something else for my money. Frankly, it's boring, and sometimes even tedious work. Here you are, on the clock, waiting for several scanners to go through every single file and folder on their hard drives - and in some cases, doing a bunch of manual registry editing and searching too. Hours can easily go by, especially when the customer has a slower computer, and you're just praying the machine doesn't decide to freeze up in the middle of one of these scans, or else you've got to start it over from the beginning again! Meanwhile, you're starting to wonder how you're going to justify billing the person for all this time that's going by - when charging your normal hourly rate is starting to mean charging more than their system is even worth!

Just as I have no desire to join the mafia and extort money from people, I don't enjoy billing high rates to customers who were victimized by malware when all they're trying to do is struggle by on their 5 or 6 year old PC, reading their email and typing up papers.

In fact, I've often ended up trying to "do the right thing" and only charging them a more reasonable price, which meant I got seriously short-changed for my time spent. But I guess I just can't stomach the idea of taking some retired lady's entire pension for the month just because some asshat like 180 Solutions tossed their crap-ware on her computer when she thought she was just downloading a pretty waterfall screen saver or something.

Re: free speech for malware authors?

[RM6f9]

Try a KVM switch - thanks to them, it's entirely possible to be cleaning 8 computers at a time - charge each owner 1 hour's labor, lather, rinse, repeat as necessary. Housecalls extra, of course, but with the right scheduling, you can stay as busy as you want, and not feel as much guilt over your charges.

Re:Spyware vs. Adware

[entrigant]

I just call them all Malware. That seems pretty accurate to me. I don't care if it only shows ads if it installed itself as a damn driver or hooked the kernel it "Does bad things to your system/configuration."

Re:Spyware vs. Adware

[strider44]

I think that the article is trying to say that its purpose is primarily to serve ads (ad-serving software), but it also gets information from the computer so many people label it spyware. I don't see why adware can't also be called spyware if the name also fits.

Thanks to 180 Solutions

[svunt]

Everything I know about keeping a computer clean I learned after these evil bastards infected me. However, this is NOT worth slashdotting, any more than Bill Gates donating money to the Salvation Army is. 180's software is still malicious, insidious garbage, regardless of how they spring it on unsuspecting innocents. Big fucking deal, really.

No, thanks

[Moraelin]

See, even without going into what's morally wrong with that attitude (it's been said already anyway), it's a piss-poor use of my time anyway.

1. It's not the job I wanted to do. If I wanted to clean up crap, I'd be a janitor. I'm a programmer. There's a difference. I'd rather spend my time coding or playing a game, than searching through someone's registry for crap

(The same goes, btw, for crap like "I bought an ancient scanner at a flea market. Can you please make it work?" Then it turns out it's an ancient SCSI model from back in the DOS times, that nowadays the manufacturer doesn't even admit ever having sold.)

2. How much _do_ you get paid for it anyway? If I were to charge someone, say, my consultant fee for that time (as an arbitrary measure of my time's worth: that's how much I'd get paid at work for that time), chances are they could just buy a new computer, including OS, for that money.

In practice most people I know get paid some token price, if at all. Even on /. pretty much _the_ standard post about it is along the lines of "yay, I got a pizza for fixing their computer". Or a beer, or a homecooked meal, or whatever. I'm sorry, unless you're a teenager without an allowance or living on a 1-2$ per hour wage in East Elbonia, that doesn't even start to be adequate compensation. Taking a part time job at McDonalds would likely pay more money per hour than that.

And let's go back to the "if at all" part. What most people seem to want isn't to pay a professional to have their computer serviced, but to mooch some free repairs off a nerd who (in their opinion) had nothing better to do with his time anyway. Asking for money, more often than not won't get you paid, it will just get them offended. (Though on the bright side, sometimes they're offended enough to stop asking for free tech support.)