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Feds Asked to Take Action Against Adware Creator
An anonymous reader writes "CNet is reporting that a consumer watchdog group has asked the Federal Trade Commission to take action against 180solutions and CJB.net for unfair and deceptive business practices. The Center for Democracy and Technology submitted over 150 pages of examples of 180s bad practices." From the article: "180Solutions deliberately and repeatedly duped Internet users into downloading intrusive advertising software, according to a Center for Democracy and Technology complaint (download PDF). The company continued these practices even after it pledged to better itself and after receiving warnings from spyware experts and privacy advocates, the group said."
Yes, people tend to stop doing stuff after being stoned.
I don't run a virus scanner
I'm sorry... but I will laugh if one day your pc is taken down by a virus... Why not run a free one like AVG? It'll make you feel all warm and cosy inside... if just for the fact that it comes up clean in its checks.
and I don't run a realtime scanner either.
?giS
You're daft. You need to study economics. Simply put, if you buy 1 Oz .999 fine silver for $10 it will always be 1 Oz. If you put $10 into this guy's program, and it gets you the right to 1 Oz today, what do you think you get if the dollar drops (which is what this scheme is supposed to be proof against)? You get less silver because Mr NotHaus bases his value on (tada) the dollar. It's all geared to make him money at your expense.
Want to put money into silver? Go buy a bunch of worn Walking Liberty Halves or Silver Dollars. If the dollar spirals out of control your silver coins (no matter who made them) will have value, but you'll have got a heck of a lot more of them for your money.
You won't get me to accept those over-priced silver rounds except at the current exchange rate for silver.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The only reason this is a problem is because of the type of user that these companies are exploiting. You're running IE that doesn't appear to be locked down in any way on an account with administrator privileges. Basically any ActiveX app (most likely) not only has the flexibility to do basically whatever, but nothing is stopping it from tearing apart your system since it's also running with administrator privileges.
Don't feel too bad though, back in the days of Windows 98 I had some InstallShield app pop up through Internet Explorer and install some intrusive application without any warning.
Just because Microsoft gives your account admin access by default (WinXP) doesn't mean you can't do anything to protect yourself. You should take some time to lock down your system if you don't want another infection. No more admin level access to your every day account, etc. Unfourtnately, because your type of setup is so common unscrupulous companies will take advantage of it. (See also: SONY)
The recent WMF vulnerability affects every application that uses the Windows libraries for displaying images, which includes IE7. I'm guessing that's what caused it.
Want a high quality FOSS RTS game? Try Warzone 2100!
For details on 180 solutions tricks go to http://www.benedelman.org. It has screenshots of 180 solutions in action...pretty detailed and interesting to read. I'm especially amused by this recent bit of jousting going on between 180 solutions and Ben Edelman. Here Ben accuses 180 solutions of targetting kids as well as being deceptive. 180 solutions responded and here are Ben's latest additions to the arguments. This is a great (and sad) example of how people choose to define the law when it's not explicitly defined.
Not true. You can't sign away your rights. You can't for example sign yourself into slavery. Unfortunately.
Unless of course you join the army.
1) So what? Most people get infected by a very small subset of the huge number of known viruses antivirus software protects you against. It is an elite few who are so exposed that they are bound to get hit first by a new virus in the wild, so new the antivirus vendors haven't added a signature to their databases yet. Sure it happens once in a while, but SO WHAT? Meanwhile there are all these KNOWN ones out there EVERYWHERE that AV software CAN protect you against. It's like saying you won't take vaccines, since the flu vaccine won't protect you against HIV. Why not be protected against the flu anyway? Basically you're saying, "It only can help me 99% of the time, so since that's not 100% I don't even want that 99% of protection so I'll go without."
2) I don't care if they are only "partially-successful" in salvaging the infected file. Especially since most are irreversibly-damaging anyhow and so there's nothing TO salvage. To me, the REAL success is getting the virus off my computer. If I lose a document or other datafile in the process, it's not the end of the world. At least the virus has been DETECTED, and REMOVED, and is no longer infecting files on my machine and others. How on earth is that a good reason to not run it anyway? Once again, you're denying yourself all the benefits that AV software DOES have since it's not perfect 100% of the time.
3) First of all, virus != trojan. Secondly, most AV sofware DO detect the common trojans out there in the wild that you're likely to come across. And their on-demand scanning DOES catch those files in exactly the situation you describe. You're just plain wrong on this point. 0% technically accurate.
4) AV software is good for the same reason we use seatbelts, surge-suppressors, and bullet-proof vests. They add a level of protection that covers a significant scope of what one is bound to experience that it's worth it. A seatbelt won't save you if a semi crashed down on top of you, but usually people just get into rear-enders. A surge-suppressor won't protect you if lightning hits the line 10' from your computer, but usually that's not the case and what you experience are normal surges well within its range of protection. A bullet-proof vest won't protect you against a RPG shot at your head, but they have saved many people from gunshots aimed at the torso which is the majority of what cops come up against, and you'd be hard-pressed to argue with a cop that he shouldn't bother wearing his/hers.
And finally... "virii" is not a word, and horribly incorrect under all rules of Latin as a plural of "virus".