Slashdot Mirror
Going From Gator to Claria
Ant writes "Wired News has an article on the famous spyware company that went from Gator to Claria. From the article: 'Three years ago the company was considered a parasite and a scourge. Today it's a rising star -- selling virtually the same product. How a pop-up pariah won the adware wars.'" The name change happened about two years ago, and a lot has changed since then.
Start a happiness pandemic
And if it contacts their servers with your current url to deliver ads relevant to the site your visiting, it even meets the definition of spyware.
actually, HiPriestM$ didn't deem them clean. from TFA:
Microsoft considered acquiring Claria. The two went as far as holding meetings to discuss terms. However, Redmond employees who were aware of Claria's reputation demurred, setting off what the Times called an "internal battle" among Microsoft execs. Neither company will comment on the article.
the cited times article is archived, but you get the idea. i would have loved to have been on the wall for that "internal battle" at MS. kinda would tell you something telling about the environment there.
/. is what happens when geeks talk. get used to it.
It's libel if you can't afford the lawyers to fight it.
Yes indeed! If they are legitimate now, and have value (and shares) they can be sued. How many slashdotters have, like myself, have probably spent days (total) removing this crud? And this was in a controlled office environment, not even counting time helping relatives and friends.
Basis for class action lawsuit
Time effort and lost productivity and bandwidth in removing gator/claria products
1)
a) time to remove the product, and the time and effort learning how to
cleanly remove it.
b) subsequent loss before removal of the product of efficiency
c) recovery of costs for displaying ads using clients (not advertisers
resources)
2) Damages
a) absence of a proper removal tool (complete uninstall) required in some
cases reformatting and reinstall of Windows and all applications by a
cpu professional.
b) subsequent loss of the computer for said period
c) trespass
Given today's legal environment, I eagerly await seeing some suits of this nature going forward. Claria's Bankrupty could be so beautiful.
>
> Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, says it's possible to track people online without being underhanded. The FTC is in favor of online advertising, she explains, "and sometimes tracking makes advertising work better for consumers."
>
> In other news, cats are in favor of open birdcages.
If step 7 is "..." before "Profit", then I humbly submit that the answer for "..." is to "lobby HomeSec".
Gator CPO at the Department of Homeland Security
In United Soviet States of America, privacy watchdog watches YOU!
Claria is perhaps best known for the Gator spyware products, which display ads on the computers of web surfers. It bills itself as the "leader in online behavioral marketing". As a result of the problems relating to its software and the way it has often been installed, Claria Corporation may be the Internet-based company with the worst corporate reputation.
Circumcision is child abuse.
The end-user benifit is the use of Claria-supported programs for free, instead of paying for the ad-free version.
Claria lets developers release an ad-supported version of their software without developing their own ad framework, thus allowing them to release free software and still make a profit. Popular programs Go!Zilla and Kazaa both used Claria at one point.
I've got it by leaving the machine logged in overnight. Damned if I know how.
The other day I had to recover an old access database. Nobody remembered the password, of course, so I donwloaded the trial of one of the password recovery programs. 1 second after clicking on it the nastiest scumware I've ever seen appeared (Spy Sheriff).
This thing:
Changed my background, and locked it to 'you have been infected with spyware'.
Ran no less than *four* copies of itself.
Installed a service that went 100% CPU, and downloaded more spyware in the background (well it tried to.. I pulled the cable after about 10 seconds.. still managed to get a hell of a lot though.. damned broadband).
And here's the clincher:
It killed MS Antispyware, then found its install directory and erased it. Not only did Antispyware not detect it, it was powerless to defend itself.
Took me nearly a day to get rid of that bastard. Spybot would say it had cleared it, then it'd all come back again after a reboot. MS Antispyware was the same... it'd see it, but fail to remove it properly. Of course neither of these run in safe mode (Antispyware won't even *install* in safe mode... some use that is). I eventually killed it by manually tracking it down in the registry and finding its 're-spyware' routine (which was a priviliged service it had installed, that *none* of the anti spyware apps detected.. because it had managed to rename itself in memory to svchost.exe).
Claria has a deal in cash for microsoft not ot remove their products and also will sue anyone who tries to remove their software due ot loss of revenue. I believe they are going after lavasoft as well.
http://saveie6.com/
I just installed all of the software and highly recommend it for anyone afraid of spyware.
http://saveie6.com/
Gator becomes Claria, Philip Morris becomes Altria, a con man changes the address of his scam mail order company. They still put out the same crap they always did, just preying on people who aren't aware that they changed their name...
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
the noscripts extsension lets you explicitly allow sites to use javascript on a perminant or temporary basis. It uses a functionality similar to firefox's popup blocker, so it's pretty convenient. Now as to whether you trust a 3rd party app to take care of your security needs, that's another question entirely.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!