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A Day in the Life of a Spyware Company
prostoalex writes "Business Week has a detailed expose of Direct Revenue. The article has some juicy details on the everyday workings of a spyware outlet, talks about the the business model and advertisers who funnel cash to Direct Revenue, and even mentions Direct Revenue's anti-spyware achievements (the company's installer blasted away competing spyware apps, so that the user's computer wouldn't be overwhelmed with redundant pop-ups)."
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/07/155 1237
It's the same article in a different place.
Additionally, it's in a different place, but it's the same article.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
"and even mentions Direct Revenue's anti-spyware achievements (the company's installer blasted away competing spyware apps, so that the user's computer wouldn't be overwhelmed with redundant pop-ups)."
The crack dealer on one side of the street achieved a victory against crime today when he killed the competing dealer on the other side.
I very much doubt that their reasons for blasting away competing apps were for the benefit of the user. Most likely, they don't want the user's computer to slow down enough for them to notice and do a spyware sweep.
How to stop them in three easy steps:
find executives
kill them (or pay a crackhead to do it)
rejoice
Thus illustrating the old saying "for every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." When it becomes OK to kill anyone that does something you don't like, it also becomes equally possible that others will kill you when you do something they don't care for. But of course you're a good enough troll to know that already.
So if you run their program and their competitor's program at the same time, they will kill each other off? Who needs virus scanners now?
Actually, who needs this? Windows has this feature built right in.
How about we vote? Me: give him death via organ donation
Long ago I stopped reading email bounce messages. If my email bounces, oh well. It's just lost. I get hundreds of bounces each day for emails that spammers sent in my name.
My email does bounce though, all the time. It bounces because everybody and their dog invents a brutal spam filter, each one differently flawed.
Just today I failed to communicate with somebody. Gmail sends from *.google.com instead of gmail.com, which is enough to bounce and/or silently delete the mail.
Even after filtering, much of the email I get is spam.
Lately, I don't even bother reading email that claims to come from banks that I actually do business with. Figuring out the legitimacy multiple times per day is too time-consuming.
Email is my primary communication method. It has been ruined. I can no longer rely on messages to be delivered and read. This has been a grave loss for me. I'm just one of many. So yes, the spammer should die. Humanity loses too much from this sort of behavior.
Douglas Kee, then Direct Revenue's chief of quality assurance (QA)...
Isn't having a quality assurance branch for a spyware company kind of an oxymoron?
That's like having an "ethics department of sudan" or "NSA oversight committee".
Sigh...
The Secret of Life: Proteins fold up and bind things.
Not so. Just have to dig a bit into the court records provided publicly. Here's the PDF of the court document.
It shows the address of these folks on page 2 as 107 Grand Street, New York, NY. Pulling up Google Earth it looks like you can find these folks at 40 deg 43'15.8N 74 deg 00'04.9W.
Not that I would suggest anything as childish as signing these folks up for free advertisements or any such thing. Just seems like since these folks are digging through everyone else's privacy I'm sure they wouldn't mind having their company address a matter of well known public record.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Latitude, longitude, altitude.
:)
This is Slashdot - all we really need is their IP address
For persons concerned about spyware it should be pointed out that the important thing is not the spyware company,
It is the companies which employ them.
The article glosses over that with only slight mention. . .
As a victim of the Aurora trojan on a Windoze box I became intimately aware of Direct Revenue and the damage they have caused to many people. Until this article, however, I always assumed they were supported by pr0n sites and spammers.
Instead it turns out Vonage is their main customer!
It's bad enough that Vonage plasters their annoying ads all over the net, and plays their annoying jingle on every channel of TV. Obviously, though, that is not sufficient. They must also use spyware to hook customers and violate more US and International laws.
Vonage has a history of this type of illegal behavior (in chronological order):
1. Its Chairman, Jeffrey Citron, was charged by the SEC with Securities violations due to illegal trades, while he was Chairman of Datek Securities, before starting Vonage.
2. Vonage has consistently engaged in anticompetitvive behaviour against its competitors by blocking SIP calls, and locking down their devices to prevent customers from using the devices with competitors.
3. Vonage has consistently engaged in deceptive advertising when selling their equipment and services by not disclosing that the equipment is not really owned by the consumer (it can't be unlocked to work with other providers).
4. Vonage has consistently engaged in deceptive marketing by convincing customers to LNP port their existing phone number to Vonage when the LNP port could not be done. Even though Vonage could not port the number due to lack of a CLEC in their area code, Vonage reps would tell the customer it could be done "soon".
5. Vonage deceptively operates a web site at Vonage-Forum.com. Only recently has a notice gone up that the site is not operated by Vonage. The site, however, uses the trademarked Vonage name and logo, and has Vonage ads on it.
6. The whole Vonage IPO stock fiasco: not surprising if you noticed item #1.
If Vonage doesn't qualify for U.S. Federal Prosecution on at least ONE of these items something is clearly wrong with our legal system that supposedly was fixed after Enron/Worldcom.
It amounts to stalking, spying, possibly breaking and entering, and stealing, and the porn pop-ups break federal laws.
When you go to many websites, such as Amazon or Adam & Eve, you can expect as much privacy as in a local mall. But if someone were to follow you around from store to store, at that point it would be stalking.
Now when that "someone" (spyware company) breaks into your property (your computer) to install something without your consent (spyware programs), it's beyond just your typical stalking and into spying. Add to the charge that this "person" didn't have permission to enter your property in any way and you can add breaking and entering to this.
To run this program that you didn't consent to having uses power you are paying for. If it causes your system to crash, if you are someone who can't fix it, you've got to pay someone to repair it for you. Money out of your pocket. Theft. At the least of your own time to fix it.
When you go to a porn site, you usually have to click something saying you are at least 18 or of legal age to view sexually explicit material, and that you consent to doing so. If you were to sit a minor in front of the computer, or were to allow a minor to be nearby while viewing said material, you've commited an offense for which you could be required to register as a sex offender. But yet porn pop-ups happen on sites that aren't sexual in nature, sites that kids sometimes visit. The spyware company is giving no notice whatsoever that sexual material is about to pop up, no chance to consent or for children to be removed from the room first. Would this not be a violation of federal laws by the spyware companies by exposing minors to sexual material?
So I repeat, why is spyware not illegal?
It's a girl!