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Alleged Adware Purveyor Indicted
weeva writes "Wired News reports that federal prosecutors have indicted a 20-year-old California man for installing adware on 400,000 Windows machines he compromised with a variant of RxBot. Jeanson Ancheta allegedly pulled in $60,000 in affiliate fees from porn pop-up company Gammacash, and 180solutions subsidiary ZangoCash. The feds hope to seize his BMW."
Not necessarily...consider this, what's worse:
Your wife divorcing you to marry some jerk she met on the internet
or
Your wife divorcing you to marry your best friend.
Point being that, sometimes it's *better* to be fucked over by the man in the black hat, instead of a reputable software company that provides contact information and is only legal because of one sentence burried deep in an EULA...at least thats MHO.
Seems like the feds could clean all of this up by launching a quick investigation into *every* affiliate of the spyware/adware companies. The only way an affiliate can get someone to load this junk is by trickery or exploit.
Not so. Plenty of fine-print boilerplate associated with online games or other things will do the same. For example... you offer a free Java-based garden or room design program. Then you make sure that people running web sites for interior decorators or garden clubs know that they can link to it for free. People use it, and agree to the terms without thinking. Presto, you've got permission to drop a litte proxy or tool bar or other naughtiness on their machine. They've asked you to, without thinking about the consequences. People looking to play a free game of poker or do a crossword puzzle are easily seduced that way.
Of course, that all takes some work, and most sleazy affiliates are way too lazy to do it the "honest" way. And the ones that do it fine-print-loophole way are still facing lawsuits because the tactics, while literally OK, are still clearly attempting to fool people.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I hope this is the SOB that's been sending me those goddamned "online pharmacy" ads. They're just about the only ones that are getting through my filters, but I'm seeing 5-10 of them every day.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The really sad thing is that this month's Inc magazine posted a list they called the "Inc 500" (wantabe Forbes here) and 180Solutions was among the top time companies (maybe #4 IIRC). They are evil but they're making a lot of money.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
is still free and according to TFA even helping the authorities catch their own pushers. So WTF?
Oh well, what the hell...