Advertisers May Face Ridicule For Adware

An anonymous reader writes "A ZDNet article reports that the FTC may be gearing up to humiliate companies that advertise via adware." From the article: "The FTC would publicly announce and publish the name of a company that advertises using adware that installs itself surreptitiously on consumer PCs or using spyware, Leibowitz said. He would recommend publicly shaming advertisers to the other FTC commissioners if the adware problem doesn't decrease, he said."

Comments

Sounds like free advertising.

[Anonymous Coward]

No such thing as bad publicity.

Deeper Issues

[Max Threshold]

"The deeper issue, [spam lord Trevor] Hughes said, is the way online advertising is handled. Many companies let a third party take care of their advertising and that company may delegate even further, involving many people and companies before an ad gets placed."

This isn't just an issue for spamvertisers. Delegating fundamental business processes (e.g., customer billing) to third parties seems to be a popular with all sorts of companies as a means of obfuscating procedures and dodging responsibility for mistakes. I call bullshit on all of it!

Re:Wonderful idea, but could get sticky...

[vertinox]

For example, is a piece of software that "phones home" for ANY reason considered spyware?

If it is without the knowledge of the user, then yes, that is pretty much the definition of spyware.

If a program pops a dialog up and says, it wants to know if its ok to send DoubleClick all my history urls and cookies and then I click yes and it phones home... Then well... I'm just dumb, but thats not spyware.