Slashdot Mirror
Adware Spreads Through Myspace
Sandbagger writes "Here's an interesting problem for MySpace — groups of websites that entice MySpace users into placing videos onto their profile pages (under the guise of 'free content'), without disclosing a key piece of information that might make them think twice. When someone visits one of these profiles carrying the video, a DRM acquisition box pops up and attempts to install Zango adware. In all likelihood, the profile owners don't even know these videos are doing this to their visitors. The end result is an Adware affiliate effectively removing himself from the distribution chain and letting kids promote these videos instead, in a strange example of viral marketing gone wrong."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
this is too much like an AIDS outbreak in a sex offender prison I can't be sad for this
I got you an Andes mint, but it melted in my pocket
... that im happy to use linux and not have to worry about malware, spyware, or anything else that totally brings windows to a crawl.
Upon refreshing the main page, I found a slide-out Microsoft flash ad. That thing was annoying as hell, and it keeps coming up.
On Adware and Myspace: it was a pandemic waiting to happen. One of those nasty traits of a large populus, is that when something becomes sufficiently commonplace and comfortable, it becomes an easy target. It's my understanding that myspace is riddled with holes, bugs, etc. That being said, it's only a matter of time until those are found, and exploited.
Though I understand it doesn't end with Myspace, as the attack used is not explicitly limited to that social networking service; it simply is the vehicle for the delivery, and a prime candidate with a vulnerable userbase.
Unrelatedly, I heard a random statistic that said that some asinine percentage of the net's streaming video traffic was due to Myspace. I brushed it off, as, well, that's a sortof silly thing to take to heart, but I wonder if there's any truth to it.
Informatus Technologicus
Now sysadmins can block this and say that it has adware / spyware and we can't let are users go there.
This "article" (i.e. blog post) doesn't even mention what browser(s) this affects or how it works. What program is at fault here.. wmplayer? Or is this little dialog box *after* pressing yes to some shady ActiveX thing.
in a strange example of viral marketing gone wrong.
Strange because things referred to as "viral" so rarely go wrong.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Viral marketing is a relatively harmless marketing strategy that takes advantage of "word of mouth", using its audience to reach new audience. Consider the popular website homestarrunner.com, which has never used marketing but instead relied on its visitors to encourage others to visit. "Viral" comes from the idea that one person sees it, and shows it to several friends, who show it to several friends. This can reach a much wider audience than conventional marketing methods and cuts down on marketing costs.
My bicyles
Let's shorten that up a bit:
:)
Marketing is like rape to sex.
Or:
Marketing is always wrong.
Has a nice ring to it, that last one.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
With all the clutter on there already, how did anybody notice in the first place??
I don't see a story.
always use protection when visiting a new friend, or even old friend, on myspace. Because you never know where those dangly parts have been.
I'd hate this practice too, if it affected me, but why is it any more wrong, than any other children-targeted marketing (like advertising action-figures in between cartoons)?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So, would it be bad if my friend, Tom... Yeah, that's it. Tom likes some commercials, the funny ones, that is.
Now, that wouldn't mean that Tom, my friend, likes to get raped, would it?
It's pretty clear that parents today aren't doing their jobs and policing their kids' MySpace accounts in many ways. I'd want to know where my teen was getting videos from if I were a parent. Not to spy on them, but just to let them know that their parents just want to have a general idea of what's going on in their life. As soon as I saw one of these popups, I'd demand that they take the videos off and would file a criminal complaint with the police against the spyware vendor.
People look at me like I'm a Nazi because I seriously don't think most Americans should be enfranchised. Let's face an ugly truth. Our founding fathers were right: most people are unfit to vote. This is a perfect example why. Parents and teens that by now can't handle their own security online are generally irresponsible people, and irresponsible people make terrible voters. Problem is that for every voter who has his or her shit together, watches their kids and is a good, solid citizen, there are 5 morons who will vote like sheep. That dilutes the power of the responsible people to guide society.
I'm personally sick of the MySpace crap. I don't know how we'd find a good criteria for mass-disenfranchising bad parents and most college-age people, but we need to find one. Society is going to hell because we let people who cannot take responsibility for themselves vote in people who won't take responsibility for themselves... and that's bad. These are the people with their fingers on the most powerful nuclear arsenal on Earth.
Learning how spyware gets you is part of using the Internet. It's like living in a big city and actively avoiding finding out where the bad sections of town are.
I guess people are confortable living a life of misery for something that they didn't even do. It is one thing to be falsely charged of a crime, it is another to be given an effective death sentence.
this just smacks of 'not controlled here' syndrome. people want to link other people's stuff, and they do, but the content (and bandwidth!) owners don't guarantee that what they link when they create thier page is what is going to remain there.
basically, anchor refer tags do not always point to what they are supposed to. myspace is bringing back to the forefront lots of little details/problems from the late nineties from 'user' made websites, mostly geocities. it is reminiscent of when someone would like to embed an image fron your domain onto thier page and you would change it to a goatse picture.. and thier page would be showing what you controlled (and then they would bitch, but thats besides the point).
when you embed (and link: remember that 'i am viewing gay porn IE killer javascript awhile back?!) content from other providers, you should trust them not to change it (and let them know you are doing it!).
My stepbrother installed that Zango stuff on my computer. I uninstalled it, and the next day I found it installed again. So I used the hosts file to redirect zango.com to zombo.com
Problem solved.
really 867993
Karma schkarma
Are we really going to let a little adware get between me and my 15,000 underage girlfriends?
This is darwinism. If we stop putting out patches and programs to kill adware/spyware only the strong will survive. Granted reformatting your computer isn't that difficult still it takes them off the internet. People with common sense will realize that I shouldn't download something that just pops up. Somebody should write a pamphlet about it and distribute it with new computers. Honestly you have to be a fool to not use google video for your myspace videos. They have the best servers and maybe not the greatest variety but it is a name you can trust. I will admit I have a myspace profile, but I don't put crap in it. I use it to make plans on occasion and meet up with people I have lost touch with. Myspace needs to stop allowing the video codes, or only allow it from certain servers. That would be the quickest solution. Back to darwinism download spyware once, shame on you, download spyware twice shame on me. Thats what I think about that. Its actually pretty clever. Myspace videos are pretty insiduous, so its cheap advertising. Quite a good plan.
Let me put in a shout for TreasureTrooper - no adware, but mobs of dorks are spamming YouTube video comment streams on their behalf
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
I know that one can build a gateway box to scan and remove viruses from internet traffic before it hits the lan, but can the same thing be done with spyware thus making it a little bit safer to not block myspace and other such sites that are reaching levels of popularity that make them impossible to block in some enviornments with office politics pressure and all?
Zefrank is contributing with his "ugly myspace" competition!
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
The same problem appeared on blogger a year back. I don't know if they ever got the problem under control (I learned to stop using the next blog button), but it was a real pain.
There are two problems here, first MySpace should get a clue and eradicate the infestations. Second IE should have taken steps against forced downloads back in 1998 when it was only realplayer and flash that kept asking if they could install fifty times a day. At least that was only a consequence of the pages having the active content rather than a deliberate attack to put the malware on the machine.
The reason I use Windows is precisely because you don't notice this sort of stuff if you spend your time using Firefox. I want to know the next attack while it is going on.
As an absolute rule it should never be possible for active content running in a user application to crap on the operating system internals. It should never be possible for any program to install itself in a way that is intended to prevent removal.
Windows is trying to introduce this separation but running a Windows box without access to administrator or super user privs is pretty miserable. And to an attacker super user is administrator in any case.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
When News Corp bought MySpace back in '05 I expected membership would begin to drop like a stone, as the "anti-establishment", Bush-hating, Indie-music loving, media-toppling population of MySpacers fled on to "the next big thing".
Sure enough, dozens of "Web 2.0" MySpace clones appeared, offering better features and the same "fight for the little guy" mentality that MySpace had become famous for. I expected those MySpacers would be off in no time. Being that I'm a tad too old (26) for those "wacky kids", I diverted my attention and awaited the sound bite that "the MySpace phenomena was over".
A year later, I'm still waiting. Meanwhile, the juaggurnaut that is MySpace continues to grow like WalMart on crack, and other News Corp properties (FX, Fox, Fox News) have jumped on the bandwagon. Call me naive, but I expected the "corporate parent" to stay well hidden from MySpace for fear of losing their main demo (Q: what are you rebelling against? A: what do you got?). Instead the opposite has happened: MySpace and fox passed the "sell out" threshold months ago, and millions more have poured onto MySpace as a result (I find myself meeting people well into their 30's and 40's with freaking MySpace accounts these days!).
So, the simple answer here in regards to the recent scam-ware MySpace epidemic is: duh. My opinion of those "60 million" antidisetablishmentarianist (take THAT grammar nazis) hit rock bottom awhile ago.
So why do I get so fired up about a website I never used in the first place? Because I give people too much credit, that's why. I was first exposed to MySpace by searching technorati and ending up in "the blogs". Believe it or not, not ALL MySpacers are completely illiterate retards. A few made excellent points regarding DRM, media and political collusions, and the evils of Fox News. But when all of this "dissent" can be bought up by "the enemy" in 5 minutes, and NO ONE EVEN CARES, it simply blows my mind.
But then I admit to myself that I still use Google, and therefore, am an ugly stinking hypocrite according to my own psuedo-morality.
In the immortal words of Homer Simpson: D'oh.
barack to the future?
...and I thought that myspace was itself a virus...can a virus infect a virus?
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
There's times when I'm actually glad that it's too much hassle to get the latest version of flash for my Linux. It means I don't have to look at stupid shit on people's MySpace pages...
Ubuntu Music Project: OSS for music tech geeks
I mean, common, evil... everybody's doing it!
Here we can see a fine example of the tragedy of the commons.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Someone has obviously written this article as a veiled attack on MySpace. I don't really have an opinion on MySpace, but the fact is, ANYONE can post an tag to show a video on their profile.
The person (author of the article?) got a video link to a video from Zango which was DRM'd. The DRM is what makes your Windows Media Player popup that window. The file's DRM tells the Windows Media Player what URL to pull up. Anyways, all this person did was post a DRM'd video.
What a stupid article. It's all FUD to me.
I visited these profiles, and didn't get the pop-up??? Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4
Kernel Krunch - Part of a Complete OS
This could happen to any place that allows uploaded video, and probably will happen before too long.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
He probably just likes to watch.
and we do not condone vigilantie justice, like hunting these bastards down and ripping their legs off and beating them with them ... why?
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
That's funny.... I use Windows and I dont' worry about any of that, either.
I've been using vlc, but it's plugin crashes firefox pretty consistently. So what else can you use (that isn't just a front end to the same codecs wmplayer uses)?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
* Insert your value for eventually to see if doomed applies to you.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
seriously, what the fuck are you talking about?
fyi, pretty much every Linux media library is a frequent subject of security advisories. Ffmpeg, mplayer, xine-lib, vlc, mad... Not all distros are diligent in fixing these issues and removing vulnerable versions. Gentoo in my experience is pretty fast, but some others are too lax. Chances are, there is a sploit for at least one multimedia application you use. And if someone wants to pwn you, all they need to do is know what version of what media player you use, and then have you open a special video file. Oh, you think that nobody knows what media player you use? Are you sure that you've never told a Linux n00b in a forum what media player you prefer? Are you sure you've never commented on a bug report in a publically accessible bugzilla? Or asked for advice on irc or a mailing list? Or mentioned in your blog that that you've just compiled that sweet beta version of libFoo-3.14?
Remember, paranoia is a survival trait, no matter what your OS.
Mod parent up ... This is a critical message and I have no idea why it is being modded down. It is not off-topic, as it was in direct response to bogus moderator of a very serious issue.
Just wait... Apathy 2.0 is coming out real soon.
I _never_ press "Accept" when prompted for DRM acquisition by WMP. With cases such as this one, it wont be long before Microsoft will have to come up with a better solution. Perhaps some sort of certificate or other registry is sufficient.
How timesly. TechCrunch just reviewed this:- adware-to-myspace/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/10/zango-brings
Simpy
Info is below, and besides, doesn't this recent US patent, kind of fit MySpace?T O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-b ool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=7,069,308. PN.&OS=PN/7,069,308&RS=PN/7,069,308
s ocial_networking_websites
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P
It sure sounds alot like it's describing much of what myspace is, and myspace is a "deleware company" in the US and subject to US laws.
As for their kind fondness of spyware, see the citations below for more info.
Birds of a feather they say.
http://www.intermixedup.com/
"Intermix Management and other Insiders sold approximately $25 million of Intermix stock in full knowledge that the New York State Attorney General (NY-AG), Eliot Spitzer, would soon file a lawsuit against the company for
certain adware promotion activity. Management and Insiders sold vast quantities of stock before disclosing this critical information appropriately to the rest of the marketplace. "
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Bloggers_investigate_
"Actually, MySpace had simply shut down and become ResponseBase-- as evidenced by the "Freebies" newsletter above. ResponseBase also used a list of 8 million e-mail addresses purchased from Xdrive for their newsletters. In 2002, ResponseBase was booted from their ISP as an illicit spam organization-- with Tom Anderson himself listed as their billing contact. And later still, ResponseBase would be renamed to MySpace."
"Intermix Media itself has a tangled history. In 2004, Intermix (then operating as eUniverse) was named as a spammer organization on USENET. It purchased ResponseBase, shut down its operations, and reformed it as MySpace. On April 28, 2005, Intermix was sued by the State of New York for installing malicious spyware over the Internet. According to their press release:"
Darn you for stealing my post! If I had mod points, You'd be rated obvious.
This is just Darwin at work.
It's not Myspace. It's Microsoft. Why, for whatever reason, should Windows Media Player download and start an executable file from an unknown party?
Here's what Microsoft put in Media Player 10. See Windows Media Digital Rights Management (security). (Not your security; the content owner's security.) To play a packaged digital media file, the consumer must first acquire a license key to unlock the file. The process of acquiring a license begins automatically when the consumer attempts to acquire the packaged digital media file, acquires a pre-delivered license, or plays the file for the first time. Windows Media Rights Manager either sends the consumer to a registration page where information is requested or payment is required, or "silently" retrieves a license from a clearing house.
That mechanism requires a Microsoft-approved license server, and apparently these attackers don't have one. So they use a related feature, which allows content to run a client-side script. This does show the user a popup; its not totally silent. But if the popup is answered, the script can download and install anything.
As soon as some attacker gets their hands on a Microsoft-approved license server, they can craft much better attacks. You don't even have to break into anything; there's a published SDK. Yes, there's code-signing and you have to sign an agreement. But if you can get past that, you 0wn anything that downloads your content. Even mobile devices.
Nowadays I only take care of my and my fiancee's computer, and we're both smart enough to avoid these kinds of internet social diseases.
That being said, are there ways without special software to lock down a windows xp machine so your kid or niece or whoever couldn't inflict this kind of damage on it?
I'm really just curious, this isn't a pressing issue for me.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Darwin would be proud. As such, I propose a new tag, with the famous naturalist as its namesake.
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=346 64&src=site-marq
"Those two test accounts were actually created by one of our developers who was exploring possible opportunities, but he didn't realise it was Zango business practice not to target MySpace," said Stratz. "He should not have been doing this, and we want to tell MySpace that we didn't mean to target them." The developer, said Stratz, would soon be deleting the profiles.
Too many younger internet users: it's become an important part of their social life.
All you danged whipper snappers! Back in my day we we actually had to talk to people! That's right, both ways in order to just communicate! Yesiree! And to to get pr0n we had to ride our bikes all the way to 7-11, with a headwind both ways, and we called it "porn." Why you kids and yer Internet, lemme tell you about...
> the founding fathers didn't say that most people are unfit to vote
They didn't all think alike. A sizable camp, notably Hamilton, believed that universal suffrage would lead to mob rule because the common people would just get carried away with fads and hysteria. Jefferson championed the other view.
An example of the compromises they came up with: state legislatures used to be the ones who elected Senators, in the hopes of providing a layer of review and deliberation between the partially untrusted people and the body that could aprove treaties and remove the President from office.
Clueless people are easy to rule. Pol Pot knew it. He took it to the extreme, so today the creed is: Gullible people are just as easy to rule, but they can still be productive.
And that's where we are today. Education today is not geared towards "preparing you for life". It is geared towards making you a good citizen. You're supposed to do your job, but be unfit to do anything else. You're not supposed to make a "qualified" decision, actually it is discouraged in every way. It helps two parties: First, your politicians, who do not want you to understand the decisions and laws they make, since you would realize that they are not necessarily in your favor. And of course companies who want to sell you goods you don't need, goods you could make yourself or you could substitute for "homespun remedies" easily, if you knew you could.
The general sentiment about everything is usually "let someone else (a "professional") do it". While this is a good idea when it comes to, say, fixing the breaks on your car, it is definitly a bad idea when it comes to raising your kids!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
the whole myspace thing had gone wrong.. ?
-m10
common? Come on...
"a strange example of viral marketing gone wrong"
Viral marketing will never "go right" for anyone except the ass-sucking, bottom-feeding marketers who come up with it. Happy to help.
Agreed. A country where pissing in the woods can make you a publicly registered sex offender (yes, this does happen; yay for vigilante justice!) and where people can make (apparently socially acceptable) jokes about prison rape and AIDS. Incredible.
There's a practical problem with the way that MySpace allows people to embed videos, see if you can guess what it is:
You visit someone's page that has 4-6+ videos on it set to autorun, plus several people in their friends lists use videos as sigs, for another 8-10+ more videos.
The browser pretty much locks up (unless you're on a T1 line), and you exit the page without having seen much of the page at all, or (very likely) any of the videos.
-----------------
Of course, there is that little problem with crappy page design, but as it is, many of the pages you can't even see. First things first.
~
>It's pretty clear that parents today aren't doing their
;)
...
>jobs and policing their kids' MySpace accounts in many
>ways.
But the previous chapter of the Slashdot Parenting Manual says that if I don't give my kids private unfettered broadband access and let them play racy games, then I'm a Nazi.
So which is it? I'm supposed to monitor them every second*, or give them complete freedom?
* and if I don't monitor them every second, then everything's my own fault - no complaining to Nick Jr. if Dora suddenly goes wild on spring break or something. It's my own fault as the darn parent not doing my job
Nothing, and I repeat, nothing about /. has been or ever will be socially acceptable.
Reminds me that great joke about the prison inmates, the bar of soap, and the fire extinguisher... oh the laughs!
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Very happy to see dumb Myspace users being taking advantage of, this is excellent and supports the strongest survive position. If you cannot read the pop up and distribute everything someone gives you, then many of these people would be crack dealers in real life. Why is a computer supposed to make everything magically different, and why should someone have to filter their content because someone underage might do something stupid. Who cares, let them, then they will learn next time.
That's just word of mouth, not marketing. Viral marketing is when some MBA suit tries to invent word of mouth by lying: placing stickers on signs, graffiti, hiring hot chicks to drink your client's vodka in bars. It's still marketing, and it's extra evil because it's hiding lies inside of another lie.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
I have a photo site. I notice a lot of hits from xanga and myspace for some of my photos. Kids are using them as backgrounds.. I don't really care and have the bandwidth. Someone at work noted that if I was really annoyed I could change those users background to "another" picture.....
Anytime you cross post to content on another server you run the risk of a "switch" at anytime.
Simply change the script and don't we have another myspace "worm".
Corrected headline:
"Viral marketing infects users, film at 11"
I. for one, do not welcome our new News Corp. overlords.
"I've spent my whole life figuring out crazy ways to do things. It'll work." -- Montgomery Scott, "Relics"
Every one of those idiots deserves what they get. Unfortuanately it didn't erase their hard drives and that horrid website too.
Sorry, it's not about /. I wish that was the case.
There are a couple of very barbaric things that are acceptable to be at least indifferent to in your country's mainstream media. These definitely include prison rape, locking people up in metal cages without trial (remember the "I couldn't care less about them getting wet, they have it too good" comments a couple of years ago?) and the death penalty (this one is something that's just incrompehensible to most non-Americans).
Oh, and publishing "sex offenders'" personal details, as I mentioned. That's so far off the map it's not funny anymore.
People, I suspect the OP meant to be funny. Yet here it is with an insighful mod and scads of replies trying earnestly to refute OP's statements about viral marketing. That is funny in itself!
blah blah blah
Do you approve of putting down a rabid dog so it doesn't hurt people?
If so, why do you not approve of putting down murderers and other torturers that purposely and knowingly harm others? It's not a penalty or punishment, it's god-damned common sense.
Only stupid people are against the death penalty.
In civilized countries there's something called "life in prison". And don't say that costs too much. Stop locking up all those evil pot smokers and you'll save some real money. And your country won't be world champion of the Western world in locking up people anymore. And don't say the death penalty works. It just doesn't work as a deterrent. Not in your country, look up the stats.
Sorry, there's just nothing that can rationalize institutionalized murder. That's right, that's what it is. And the rest of the Western world has come to realize this. We're waiting.
where you can live, what jobs you can hold, and whether you can reproduce. You don't get to live in patently dangerous places, because then we have to go save you when the flood/fire/tornado we know is comming and we know we can protect against comes. I get to tell you what job you can hold, because self taught enginneers like William Mulholland don't get to build dams. And after your 5th or 6th welfare kid, if you want to stay on the gov't teet it's time to stop having kids (heck, I'd argue you shouldn't have been having kids in the first place).
Your actions don't happen in a vacume. Your freedoms are weighted against the benefits and risks to society. The classic example: shouting fire in a theatre. That's the whole point of society, a bunch of people getting together for the sake of stability and order.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
When has viral marketing ever gone right?
Ever heard of the Blair Witch Project?
Goo goo g'joob.
Although the "only smart people should be allowed to vote" idea sounds appealing on the surface, it actually ignores the real purpose of a democracy. The point of democracy is not to come up with the most intelligent decisions. If it were, why not just make Albert Einstein king and forget about the whole voting thing? (Apart from the fact that he's dead.)
No, the point is that democracy answers the question, "What right does the government have to tell me what to do?" A democratic government gets its moral authority from the consent of the governed. This can only happen if the government responds to the wishes of as many of the governed as possible, even if those wishes are stupid!
As a silly example, if 10 people are trying to pick a movie from the video store, and 9 people really really want to watch a movie that 1 person knows is terrible, what right does he have to stop the rest? They're the ones who are going to be watching it, after all. He can try to persuade them otherwise, there could be checks and balances to stop the 9 making a hasty decision, and the individual rights of the 1 also need to be protected, but fundamentally the wishes of the majority should govern.
Remember "no taxation without representation"? If you want to stop the idiots from voting, then you should also stop taking their taxes and sending their children to war. Idiots are citizens too.
http://last.fm/user/ahoier
Spam IP: 202.138.168.92
Netmask: 202.138.160.0/20
Owner: digitelone.com (APNIC/Phillipines) - On file with rfc-ignorant.org so it is useless to contact them.
Proof below: (angle brackets deleted, victim email addresses sanitized except mine)Incoherent email 'ping' from a clueless spammer. If this message had meaningful content in it, it would have been cause to celebrate -- my first real email at iamcf13@hotpop.com since I started using my homebrew email client. Oh well, still waiting....
Is there a 'global' online clearinghouse where I can email/webpost information such as this so it can 'trickle down' to all the online blacklists?
If you know of one or more, please reply to this post, thanks.
P.S. Slashdot CAPTCHA: killings
Isn't that what we all try to do to unwanted email anyway?
The police throw drug abusers into prison because they break the law. Simple as that. If someone continues to break a law multiple times, I wouldn't want them on the street (whether they take drugs or they murder people.) There are things as mistimeners, and unless they repeatedly break the law, they will not be put in prison. Although, the drug rehab centers that we have to keep people off the street needs some improvements. But these posts are a little off topic. The main problem is the advertising that they have been sending through myspace. Now even though I support advertising (even though they are annoying), something like this is a little overboard. I personally think that the User Agreements that companies send out should be a little more clear. I've never fully understood them, but all I really need to know is the general idea of what companies are doing. And I think that is the most important thing of all. User Agreements have gotten so bad, that I rarely read them anymore. (I only read them if I think spyware or information exchanges with third parties are involved or something seems suspicious.)