Spyware Still Cheating Merchants

Jamie found an interesting story about how Spyware is still on the move. It talks about how Spyware vendors are trying to clean up their image, but still doing fishy things. It breaks down several common types of spyware and some analysis of each.

Comments

Spyware FP

[Anonymous Coward]

The spyware on slashdot's servers allowed me to spy on this story and craft a 1st post with ample time to spare.

Ben Edelman, here

[bedelman]

I'm Ben Edelman, the author of the piece. I'm happy to answer any questions folks may have.

It would be particularly interesting to hear from merchants and by legit (non-spyware-using) affiliates who are ripped off by the practices I documented.

Re:Ben Edelman, here

[teknopurge]

I'm a merchant that has recently looked into many forms of online advertising, and these are my thoughts:

Sponsored-search advertising is a ripoff. Google makes the vast majority of their money this way and I take issue. We have run numerous campaigns and stopped due to the lack of quantification. Talking with other merchants, people are starting to get disgusted by the google/yahoo/ms advertising avenues. clickfraud is rampant and we end up paying for it. recently, every time google releases earnings i can't help but laugh. all it takes is for a adwords merchant to start a campaign and watch their traffic and usage for a month to see what is going on. my feeling is that there is no better solution for online advertising, so people feel the need to do _something_, so they will continue to pay because they feel it is better than nothing.

Re:Ben Edelman, here

[idesofmarch]

Which pop-up blocker did you find most effective?

Re:Ben Edelman, here

[Aladrin]

No offense, but isn't that the same as all other types of advertising? If you feel you are getting enough for your money, you buy the advertising. If you don't, you don't.

TV ads continue to be annoying and people are actively avoiding them now. Instead of making better commercials that don't annoy people, they just keep shelling out the money for the same old crap.

Radio, ditto.

Newspapers, magazines... Other than the sale ads and video game magazines (which are disappointing, because the ads rarely tell you anything the actual game), I don't think I've bothered to do more than glance at an ad in years.

How is 'sponsored-search advertising' any different?

And you say 'clickfraud is rampant.' ... Are you saying that you think Google is faking clicks? Or pays someone to? I can't see how anyone but Google would benefit from this. (I suppose the paranoid part of me says your competitor could be faking the clicks, to get rid of your ads... But that could have serious legal consequences.)

Re:Ben Edelman, here

[teknopurge]

I think google is aware of the problem and is taking a blind-eye to it. It makes sense in a way: if they put in more checks to deter clickfraud their revenue would be decimated. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but you can basically hand wave "advertising charges" away from people. Case-in-point, several people who are advertising affiliates for google have had large sums of $$$ that was due for payout frozen by google(http://forums.digitalpoint.com/). If this was isolated, I would discount it as maybe a few people were doing something shady google did not like. But when respected members that have been in the advertising business a long time start have their payouts frozen because they get into the thousands of dollars, I start wondering....

Re:Serves them right?

[u-bend]

Sometimes when cleaning out a relative's totally infested PC, I think that most average computer users are so bovine in their approach to spyware, that they really don't mind all the automatic installation that goes on, as long as it doesn't interfere with the "just works" experience. In my experience, there's very little of the outrage that we feel about this stuff. It's frustrating really.

Pop-up blocker

[bedelman]

I don't have a strong view on pop-up blockers. I often use Google Toolbar. But in XP SP2, IE's internal pop-up blocker works fine too.

One key insight: Pop-up blockers don't stop spyware-originating pop-ups. Pop-up blockers stop pop-ups that load through a web browser, i.e. as a result of JavaScript code within pages users request. But pop-up blockers do nothing to stop full Windows programs (e.g. spyware) installed on users' computers.

Now google has a till option....

[simm1701]

I can see the ideal solution to this type of advertising fraud.

If I am running a site selling certain goods, then I don't really care how many hits I get, I'm bothered about how many sales I get.

Now if google can set up an adwords system for me that does not charge per click, but instead I use their payment system as a check out and grant them a commission on refered sales (as long as they can prove that the refereal was sent via a targetted ad in the current browser session would be my condition) then they can take say 5% of the sale (on top of their normal processing comission.

Then the problem comes down to trusting google to correctly report which sales on your site are actually directly from one of their adverts and not from their main search.... however its only one company, its a large and well known company so auditing it would be a lot easier than many of the smaller more dubious companies.

Re:Now google has a till option....

[Aladrin]

Don't forget the reverse is true as well: Google has to trust your company to only use the Google checkout. Phone, mail, email... There's plenty of opportunity to turn that customer away from Google's checkout without doing anything shady such as only sending 2/3 to Google and the other 1/3 to something else.

There are also plenty of people that aren't interested in Google's checkout at all, and would refuse this.

If there was a simple answer, this problem would not have existed for so long.

Maybe its time for a new name

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else find it funny that spyware is trying to clean up its image? Maybe they should start with the name. The very name SPY WARE isn't very clean. Maybe they should change their name to "used to spy now trying to decieve ware"

Ewww

[Dachannien]

Part of the problem is that online advertising has for a long time essentially been one gigantic circle-jerk, and in these cases, the original advertisers end up cleaning up the mess. Companies pay other companies to source advertising, who pay other affiliate networks and other websites a pittance to carry the advertising. There are enough middle men to make one's head spin. The original advertisers end up having no idea who they're dealing with.

Less outsourcing, and contracts that demand less second-degree outsourcing, would help the advertisers tremendously. I doubt that it would do much for the spyware victims, though, because there'll always be another scam right around the corner.

Yes, it is frustrating.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I have tried to explain to my relatives and friends, with "real world" analogies. Like, "OK, the cable company says just leave the door unlocked, that way our tech can get in and install your new cable box and you dont have to house sit. Will you agree? Wont you feel outraged if all the merchants in town walk into your living room and paste their advertisement on your wall? Yes, security will entail some inconvences like staying at home and letting in the technician. But you would not leave the home unlocked, would you?"

The usual responses are that "You are exaggerating the dangers", and "I have nothing of value for anyone to steal in my computer" or "it is too complex to lock the machine down" or "I dont know how to lock the machine down" or "there are millions of people who dont lock their machine down, are they all fools and are you the only smart guy out there".

Their file sharing stops working. They call the tech. Some cousin of me from India walks them step-by-step to turn off the firewall in the router so that "he can come in and fix it", turns off the firewall in the machine, turns on remote assistance, fixes something and leaves. For the tech guy the metric is "minutes to solve the problem". Staying on line to turn back all the firewalls and turning off remote-assistances "does not pay". The machine gets pwend even before he is done and he recommends wiping the hard disk and restoring, wiping out everything the customer had in the disk.

It is a torture to be the one-eyed man in the land of the blind.

Re:Thats an interisting article.

[Wicked Zen]

Then you didn't understand it. Blockbuster/Netflix isn't installing the spyware. They are the ones being robbed because of spyware you already have on your computer.