Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Zango Caught in Lies About MySpace?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the bad-ango-thingie dept.

An anonymous reader writes to mention that Zango's still under suspicion for problems on MySpace. ZDNet has the story, discussing rumours of multiple accounts, paid Zango hawkers, and mass emailings. From the article: "Boyd posted some choice snippets from the email, like this: 'Zango is fairly new with myspace sites and it took me some time to see what works and what doesn't ... more profitably, *go to a bunch of your friends* who have popular profiles and pay them (it's up to you so much. One of my partners said 5$..maybe offer to split the money with them?) to put a zango video into their profile through your site. This will give you hundreds of extra installs a day (this probably works even better than having them on your actual site).'"

3 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Zango's underhanded marketing by 9x320 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This isn't the first time I've seen them engage in this. I first encountered Zango when its predecessor company, 180 Solutions, told me to install Install026.exe, which had 180 Search Solutions infect my computer with its spyware. I had been installing a video game at the time, while browsing the webcomic hosting site Keenspot, so I thought it was part of the installation process and clicked the button. My computer fell to the spyware and I had to end up doing a system restore. Since then 180 Solutions has merged with another spyware company to become Zango.

    Keenspot suffered massive outrage, and coldly responded that they outsource their advertising to the Burstnet company, which used iFrames to distribute their ads, so they had no control over it, and that everyone is evil and stealing when they use Firefox's AdBlock.

    The next time I encountered them was when I went to the website Newgrounds, which apparently had become infested with spyware since the last time I visited, and said I needed to install Zango to access portions of the site. This spyware problem was in the Wikipedia entry for a few months, but now it appears to have been removed?

    The last time, incidentally, was when I was searching Wikipedia. I came across this revision of a Wikipedia article on Zango Messenger, a spyware laden IM service made by Zango. Look how glowing its review is. Wikipedia records the IP addresses of every user that edits when they aren't logged in, and when you look at the IP address that made the edit, you will see that the address traces back to a company by the name of "180 SOLUTIONS HOOKED-2", with 180 Solutions being the company's old name!

    It's hosted by Time Warner Telecom, by the way. That's another reason not to use AOL.

    1. Re:Zango's underhanded marketing by 9x320 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Oh, my, I'm sorry if it looks like I'm karma whoring, but this post is much more urgent. The last post about Zango mentioned that they had created a Zango Messenger article in Wikipedia in 2005, which has since been fixed by Wikipedia administrators.

      It turns out that was not an isolated incident. If you look at this article revision from April 2006, you will see that they have been at it much more recently. I suspect that Zango is doing a full-out campaign on any "Web 2.0" website, any website that anyone can edit or contribute to. I would not be surprised if they had also been marketing on Digg---I think I have even seen them there, in fact!

      The evidence for a lawsuit against their company for their destructive marketing practices is mounting...

    2. Re:Zango's underhanded marketing by 9x320 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      More developments:

      Less than thirty minutes ago at the time of writing, Zango once again edited the Wikipedia article on Zango messenger. See this edit, which has been reverted by other users. They wrote in the edit summary, what Wikipedia asks its editors to write to justify edits and explain changes, "Fact checking and bias redirection."

      The same IP address wrote on the article's discussion page, "29 June 2006, reworked the corporate advertising copy for accuracy. I hope you don't mind me having a little fun with these shills. If you object to my copy, please exchange it for your own, so long as it is not advertising and/or misinformation in Zango's favour. Thank you and good night. [Anonymous]"

      They have just admitted to manipulating Wikipedia for corporate advertising. They think they are "anonymous," but this adware company knows not even the concept of IP addresses. I am opening a discussion with Wikipedia administrators at this URL with the intention of getting all Zango IP addresses permanently blocked from Wikipedia. Please observe and provide input if you feel you have something useful to say.