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The Plot To Hijack Your Hard Drive
An anonymous reader writes Business Week Online examines the business practices of spammers and pop-up advertisers, using much-maligned Direct Revenue as an example case. The article discusses the history of the company, their rocky road through good and bad times, and what they're willing to to get your eyes on their ads." From the article: "Among Direct Revenue's alumni, pride over technical cunning mingles with regret for exasperating so many computer users. After waffling on the issue during a long interview, one former Dark Arts wizard sighs and sums up his version of the company credo with an elegiac observation by abolitionist Frederick Douglass: 'Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.'"
Stop Using Windows!!!! Duh!!!
Patient: "Doctor it hurts when I do this."
Doctor: "Then stop doing it!!!"
--Johnny hates stupid!
Intelligence and virture are not the same thing.
Slashdot.. where people join together in deliberate ignorance.
From the article:
From early on, a small group of programmers at Direct Revenue focused on how to protect their employer's programs once they were lodged in a computer, current and former employees say. The team called itself Dark Arts after the term for evil magic in the Harry Potter series. One of the biggest threats Dark Arts addressed came from competing software. The presence of multiple spyware programs can so cripple a computer that no ads manage to get seen.
In my opinion, spyware that purposely damages other software without user consent(even if the target software is spyware) is really just a virus, trojan, or something like that. Seriously, these people need to just chill out and stop screwing with everyone's PCs.
"You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test." - President George W. Bush
Also from TFA: "Spyware rakes in an estimated $2 billion a year in revenue, or about 11% of all Internet ad business, says the research firm IT-Harvest. Direct Revenue's direct customers have included such giants as Delta Air Lines (DALRQ ) and Cingular Wireless. It has sold millions of dollars of advertising passed along by Yahoo. And Direct Revenue has received venture capital from the likes of Insight Venture Partners, a respected New York investment firm."
People need to learn to stop following links that anger them! If no one purchased goods and services from these irritants, they would lose their 11% market share and slowly go away. I subscribe to Netflix, but I would never follow one of their links from a popup.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
I love how these articles talk about "your computer" as if everybody in the world is running Windows. They don't even mention that Mac and Linux users don't have these issues. Just a little mention that there is an alternative, is that too much to ask??
Certainly better than to be receiving the injustice.
-Beer, it's not just for breakfast anymore!
It seems that the difference between insightful and troll is:
;p!!!!!!111111!!!!!!ELEVENTY!!!!"
"LOL!!!
Too bad that part will automatically cause most people to ignore a very insightful and accurate comment.
Mod me to hell if you want, but you can't deny what he said.
Ignore anything I said above, I actually agree with everything you believe - mod accordingly.
I've never clicked on an ad in my life. Except maybe by accident when the site's navigation is right near the ad. I just did a random survety of my coworkers. They all said the same thing without my prompting: That they only have done it by accident, and can't think of any specific ad they ever clicked on.
Is ad revenue no longer based on pay-per-click? Because if it is, I don't know who is clicking on them.
their product that promises to protect you against popups:
"Windows Defender (Beta 2) is a free program
that helps you stay productive by protecting
your computer against pop-ups"
Hurry up and interrupt users again, before it is too late!
'users may install a helper program, the Windows Genuine
Advantage plug-in, to enhance their download experience'
--
Microsoft staff never sees this
if they eat their own dog food.
Google isn't above questionable behavior, though. Look at their new payment service. Basically, if you are selling something, you can put a link on your order page that lets your customer use Google to handle the payment. Sounds pretty cool, right? However, one of Google's requirements is that you have that link on every ordering page of yours, and they require that the link includes the image they supply from their server. You can't make a local copy of the image on your server. You have to reference the image on their server from your page.
What this means is that everytime someone buys something through your site, even if they don't use Google to pay, Google gets a hit on that image. So, Google gets an accurate count of how many people visit your order page, and gets their IP addresses.
If they correlate that with searches from the same IP address, they are getting a hell of a lot of valuable information.
It's about Them taking whatever they can get from you without you complaining/caring enough to do something about it
Where does it say that the slavery of this millenia is actual bondage? Who says it's not a combination of the things above?
- Kal`Goblez
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. EULA's are a big part of this problem. Specifically, the way above board software forces users to accept pointless pages of legalese. It serves no real purpose, but trains users that it's OK, and in fact expected, that they should click through some agreement whenever they want to run a new program. But while the 'legitimate' software companies don't really get any benefit from the EULA's, the spyware folks depend on them to keep themselves out of jail. These fsck'ers would all be in jail without EULA's providing them cover. And if only spyware was making users click through pages of legal mumbo jumbo, users might actually stop and take notice.
The quotation is the general principle, which enables you to understand a lot of different things, some of which are more important than others. It explains, for example, why the American people are subject to the Patriot Act, DMCA, and eternal copyrights. None of these have much in common with either of the things youi mentioned.
Interesting that as of right now, you have an insightful mod and he doesn't.
that's a huge pain in the ass, as I'm sure you realize, and almost certainly overkill. Neither I or any of my friends has gotten a virus or malware for the last several years by following these 4 E-Z Steps:
(1) Do not use IE or outlook
(2) Do not click on shit indiscriminatly. Only run programs from places you trust.
(3) Do not trust places like crazyivansdiscountsoftware.com.ru or hotthrobbingboobies.com.za
(4) If you need penis enlargement or prescriptions, go to a doctor. If you need porn, go to the usenet.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
No. Not a DDOS attack. That is completely illegal, and would lower you to (below?) their level.
However... despite the distaste I have for lawyers, I think a class action lawsuit would be an appropriate retaliation. I would love to see the adware companies given a complete cash-ectomy, and that would make others think twice about it.
I volunteer my share of the proceeds to the EFF.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
When having sex with a potentially infected prostitute, wear three condoms and wash your gonads in bleach afterwards.
Alternatively, don't sleep with infected whores.
(Mods: I am not trolling. I am pointing out the absurdity of having to use so many layers of security when an alternative OS would solve all those issues without the need for so many layers of security. It's a joke. Laugh.)
The government very clearly saw what happens when you have a well educated youth during the 60's. The fact that public education has been on the decline since those days is no accident.
Who do you think taught the last couple generations? Perhaps these "well educated youth" suffer from a bit of hubris and decided they knew better than everyone else so they introduced new teaching methods which they thought would be better and those methods have failed. Nah, educated people would never claim that they have a new solution then admit a failure of their own making when it doesn't work out, lets just immediately jump to a nationwide conspiracy. Who's fault is it this week, the Free Masons or the Illuminati?
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Fat, dumb and happy is okay; but fat, dumb and afraid works, too.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
I am pointing out the absurdity of having to use so many layers of security when an alternative OS Well, this is called security though obscurity. A better example would be that people keeping letting their dog crap on your lawn. A firewall and antivirus solution would be like putting up a fence and security light. Alternatively, you could move to the south pole where there are no dogs or people around to mess up your lawn. Is Linux/MacOS really more secure then windows, is their just no one around to throw crap on it?
The key thing to remember in all this is that when it comes to advertising, you aren't the customer, you're the product. Cows can't complain to the farmer that the slaughterhouse isn't sanitary.
As someone else said, you can complain to the people who buy the ad space, but like cattle, that's likely to be just as effective. Therefore, the only thing you *can* do is fight, with alternative browsers, adware removal tools, good browsing habits, and by warning the rest of the, ahem, herd.
If we make the product unsavory, we can run the slaughterhouses out of business!
I see an issue is the operating system allows this software to be hidden
and become unremovable. Apart from not giving root access does Linux
have any mechanisms for users to avoid this pitfall. This type of
addware could in the future be installed and run in user directories.
BSD can be configured to only run applications installed in $PATH
can Linux do similar, could Linux stop it if targeted?
Go well
are you high? You condescending elitest asshole. News flash *EVERYONE* who is not a knowledgable computer user gets spyware. It doesnt matter where you go or what you do, all it takes is one misclick and BAM. owned. Calling people who get spyware stupid is like calling people who get sick because they went to the mall stupid. IT HAPPENS. How dare you take the side of spyware companies and spammers. You can't honestly say youve never gotten any spyware, no family members or friends have gotten spyware, and that your some kind of a master for running linux. OOO yeah your so fucking special arent you. God damn it people like you need to be punched in the face. Soft spot for scammers indicates to me that you probably are a scammer. And i hate spammers and scammers so much it boils my blood... They have no honour.
Sort of like when i download a file from sourceforge?
Translation: I think im smart and thats why i dont get laid
god damn spyware apologists...
* awaits -1 troll* i dont care because it had to be said.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...