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.
Steps to regaining legitimacy:
Personally, I still despise Gator...uh...Claria, and all it stands for. The legitimization of spyware...uh...adware just leads to it being even more prevalent, and for every 'legitimate' adware app, there's a score of spyware apps out there that don't bother to play by the rules. Things would be much easier if all spyware could be treated like the infectious waste it is, but of course economics dictates that will never happen.
From TFA:
In other news, cats are in favor of open birdcages.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I still don't trust 'em. It's a little like the Mafia deciding to go straight.
Is it because the High Priest Microsoft deemed Claria Clean?
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
Is still a turd. I can't count how many times I have had to uninstall that gator trojan from family and friends computers. And before firefox/google toolbar for IE was around, you would look up and 15 windows would be open trying to sell you crap.
No punishment is too lean for these cockroaches.
Few people in the online business community question the idea that marketing software should track user behavior. 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." Esther Dyson, who has been harshly critical of spyware companies in her influential newsletter, Release 1.0, agrees. "As long as there's disclosure and people are given a choice, I think monitoring users' behavior isn't a problem," she says.
The problem is, the online business community never asked the right question. What they need in that disclosure is "Are you willing to give up half the bandwidth and computer memory you paid for so that we can serve you advertising?"
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If it looks like spyware, installs like spyware, is removed like spyware....it's spyware
AT&ROFLMAO
How a pop-up pariah won the adware wars.
- Won? The tech savy people ditched IE for Firefox, Opera or simply moved to Linux, so the tech savy people "won". The non tech savy people had no clue WTF was Gator, nothing changed today, they have no clue who Claria, 180 and other scumware makers are. All they know that their PC is spamming them with p0rn and it's slower. Not to mention they accept this blindly. Face it, 90% of computer users are too lazy, don't care and/or clueless.
Start a happiness pandemic
Not enough has changed until these types of programs are illegal, and the executives of the companies that make them are serving Enron prison sentences.
They are human scum of the worst possible kind. High Priests in the religion of capitalist greed.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
"Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Microsoft came close to acquiring Claria"
Wow! These Microsoft guys are running out of ideas how to piss their users. Hopefully Gator's experience will do a vast contribution in that area.
(Only joking)
Three years ago the company was considered a parasite and a scourge
Some would also say they were mangy dogs and landlubbers as well...
Arr!
Is it Yet Another Public Relations Stunt? How much claria paid "wired magazine" so that they will write something positive about them, huh?
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
- Toned down their intrusiveness on victims' machines
- Become a known quantity rather than a shocking intruder
- Survived and made some money, thus earning de facto legitimacy as a business
They're still a scourge -- just a legal and known one.From the fine article: "Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Microsoft came close to acquiring Claria." Guess what that means, folks?
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
1. That they are still purveyors of one the most insidious brand of spyware.
2. Most of us still know it.
3. My already-low opinion of them remains so.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Al-Qaeda changes name to [insert something totally benign and arbitrary here]!
Wow, because they changed their name they must be a peaceful and genial organization now...
I meta-moderate because I care.
a lot has changed since then
Nothing has changed, not at all. Even the article admits that it is the same old same old, but with a brand new spiffy suit. Changing the name does not change the function of the software.
I remember Gator from when I was a freshman in college. Everyone was installing it on their computers, I even admit to installing it on mine once. However, it was a beast to get rid of. I think I had to put a fresh install of windows on there to clear it up. Claria is no different from Gator, or any other spyware program, except is has a PR department. Well, whip-de-do!
Luckily I know of some free apps you can download that will make your online viewing of Wired even more fulfilling! Don't delay, download today!!!!
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
CEO Scott VanDeVelde doesn't deny this. "I don't feel like there's a need to wipe the slate clean," he says. "Our technologies are dead center of where the market is going." The spyware wars are over - and spyware has won."
Why does this quote sound oddly familiar?
Agent Smith: We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start. All that we're asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known terrorist to justice.
Neo: Yeah. Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I may have a better one. How about, I give you the finger [Neo flips off Agent Smith]
Neo:
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
...that advertising people, particularly those who infest the sphere of personal computing, live in a universe that's parallel to the one in which the rest of us live.
There's a lot of talk about revenues. There's a lot of talk about private lawsuit settlements. There's a lot of talk about how effectively these guys can invade your user experience on a personal computer. At one point in the article, I read a line about Gator (Claria) suing another company for "(interfering) with its right to deliver pop-ups."
As P.J. O'Rourke would say, "What the fuck, huh?! I mean, what the fucking fuck?!" Where on Earth did these scumbags ever get the idea that they have the right to do these things? I don't see anything at all mentioned about about ethics or otherwise doing the right thing. When a few weeks ago Stewart Baker admonished Sony BMG (not directly, but everyone knew who he was talking to), "It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property -- it's not your computer," I was astonished that someone in such a position as his would step up to the plate for people like us.
Thing is, whether they're Claria, or Gator, or whatever name they want to call themselves, I still think they're still bad news. I'm just glad they're myopic enough that they haven't targeted Macintoshes yet.
As an aside, Annalee Newitz first came to my attention in the entertainment paper Metro distributed here in the South Bay area. I'm not sure if she's syndicated, but I like to think of her as a local. She's pretty sharp.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
And how they use the name "Altria Group" when possible. I like how that name almost sounds like the word "altruistic" even though they're making billions by killing people.
Is there any chance I can get that on a T-shirt?
I used Microsoft AntiSpyware today to remove Claria. Microsoft AntiSpyware reported Claria as a threat but the default action was set to "ignore" instead of "remove".
To whoever is maintaining Microsoft AntiSpyware: People are annoyed by Claria. Even the most computer-iliterate understand that something is wrong with their computer and it reflects poorly your product. People think they have "a virus".
I think Microsoft AntiSpyware is a great product, please modify it so it removes Clarias' software by default.
Regards A.C.
Little known fact*: When the Greeks invaded Troy, they first attempted to sneak past the Trojans in a large wooden alligator. The subsequent bad PR that resulted when said alligator erupted into a flurry of Greek soldiers led the Greeks to later rebrand their distribution model under the guise of a much friendlier-looking horse. The resulting slaughter was much the same, but had a much better marketing campaign. Years later Gator followed the same pattern, only replacing the large wooden animals with spyware, and the murderous Greek soldiers with pop-up ads. The Greek implementation is arguably less irritating. *Fact may or may not be complete and utter bullshit.
They're still the same hated company. They havent been accepted by any end user.
I resent the statement that a "Spyware" company won the adware wars. There isnt anything to win, other than the total obliteration of these kinds of software.
Gater lives on, the war continues.
Pirana's are honest creatures. They never have claimed they just want to give you a massage.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
It's libel if you can't afford the lawyers to fight it.
Just like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, James D. Rockefeller, and Leland Stanford did i the past, Claria is trying to do good to pave over all the ill deeds they performed to get them to where they are now.
If the effort to change their ways is sincere, then they can be forgiven. As comments thus far have shown, proving that can be pretty hard to do.
The real evil here is that if people understood their computers, they would never allowed this to be installed, if it was, the would remove it and Claria would not see these huge profits. If you can only make money off stupid people you are evil by definition.
Claria is spyware!
I said it again, where's the lawsuit?
-bZj
.sig
To say that they've won the war is like saying that Japan won the war when they bombed Pearl Harbor. I'm fairly certain that every tech support guy, network administrator and general techno-geek goes out of thier way to crush, kill, and remove every piece of spyware they can find. I know that I do.
The only thing they won is the attention of the media, and the sales from people who click on everything and anything they see...in short, the kind of people you wish you could set up a Linux box, lock them out of everything more dangerous than thier web browser, and never let them know the root password.
Morons.
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
Also, the eula's of all of these garbage programs can't possibly be considered informed consent... could they?
And finally, as a programmer, it just flat out pisses me off that people use their coding talents (and I see it as a talent as well as a skill) for such a crappy cause.
A Haiku: my language choices/assembler pascal lisp c/old school programmer
People have all kinds of problems with Claria because it used to create these evil popups. Well, Google, in a much more surreptitious manner keeps profiles of all who sign up for their services. Oh, and Google uses cookies to track logged-in users and using its toolbar tracks the sites users visit when logged out of other Google services (Gmail and such). So, Google is doing it in a much more hidden manner than Claria had in the past. That is also mentioned in Wired. Before you so quickly diss Claria, do keep in mind the kind of data mining Google does.
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
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.
This Wired article is full of misinformation, and reads like a press release from the Claria public relations department.
Here's the truth.
1. The perception: Spyware continues to be perceived as a huge threat. Just look at the Sony fiasco (a google search for "sony spyware" returns 18,600,000 hits). The anti-spyware market place continues to be active, with lots of competing products, and new players are still appearing.
2. The reality: Spyware continues to make workstations slower and less stable. Spyware phone-home traffic continues to suck up large amounts of bandwidth on corporate networks, if you don't have good protection installed. And Claria continues to be part of the problem, not part of the solution. Anti-spyware products continue to detect, block and remove Claria spyware.
3. The article implies that anti-spyware vendors are no longer protecting against Claria. That's certainly not true for the anti-spyware products that my company ships, and it's not true for other products I've tested. Although Wired puts the well-known spin on Windows anti-spyware (OMG Microsoft is in bed with Claria), it continues to detect Claria, it still warns you if you try to install it, and it still gives you the option to remove it.
Now, it's true that Claria software is slightly less abusive of your computer than it used to be, and Microsoft did downgrade the threat level based on this change in behaviour. But the fact that Claria has made their software less egregious does not mean that "spyware has won". It means that the anti-spyware crusaders are having an effect on corporate behaviour. Just as they are now having an effect on Sony's behaviour.
Doug Moen
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
>
> 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!
I tried to goto claria.com from work.
Our webwasher message said i was denied for trying to access a site in the category: Computer Crime
The rise of open source software elliminated the need to download "ad-sponsored software". I still remember the days where Gator was used to download big files over the net. But now we have bittorrent, or Shareaza (which happened to be spyware at first, but now went open source). And let's not forget about Opera, which, in the beginning, was also ad-sponsored.
Want free email app? Thunderbird. Want free wordprocessor? OpenOffice.
And this is why the term "adware" has slowly vanished from download sites, to be replaced with "open source". If Claria has faded into a low-profile company, it's because the world has changed.
Steps to regaining legitimacy
When did they ever have legitimacy?
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.
I know a lot of people still boycott Wired for that shit they pulled a while back (sending out unrequested subscriptions, then sending the bills to a collection agency), so here's a mirror
Does it still count as a boycott if you copy and paste the article? Is that not akin to boycotting Disney, for example, only to look over someone's shoulder to watch [insert rehashed movie here]? You did not [buy the movie/see the ads on the site], but you're still propagating their presence in the marketplace.
I think the difference is that I go to Google where Claira comes to you. Kind of like in Soviet Russia!
Of course everyone knows that prostitution is illegal... I would never suggest that our company get into that sort of business.
However...
I have heard that there is a growing market for "Personal Entertainment Practitioners" who make house calls. Perhaps there is a place for our company in the lucrative field of Realtime Adult Entertainment Facilitating.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
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.
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/
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
An advertiser does not have the right to install a sign on your property advertising their product without your permission. If we can get a law that states that our computers and web browser are personal property, then they no longer have the right (not that the have that right in the first place) to place a popup when you're browsing without tresspassing. The only reason this will never fly is because a website is property of other people and they choose to allow popups, no different than the neigbor across the street can give them permission to display the billboard on their property wheter you like it or not.
At some point, the line has to be drawn legally. Perhaps the property argument can only be extended as far as it actually modifies your PC, sans Sony Rootkit DRM and other malware. But it would be nice if it can be extended to your web browser, also.
Thanks,
Leabre
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Romeo and Juliet. Act ii. Sc. 2. 6
cf "A rose is a rose is a rose" by Gertrude Stein.
Also, I am beginning to think that Tourette's is not caused by genetics, but one gets it by being exposed to the internet.
So, get the fucking quotes right next time, dickhead.