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Snopes Pushing Zango Adware

Posted by kdawson on from the say-it-ain't-so dept.

DaMan writes "Here's something that isn't an urban legend — Snopes, the popular urban legends reference site, has been pushing adware, for at least 6 months, to users via ads displayed on its Web site. No one seems to have called them on it until recently."

2 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Re:all about the money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just tried to fill out their Contact Us page to ask them about their use of the Zango malware. My form submission threw an error on their server side ASP code. The really scary thing, look at the error message:

    Error Type:
    Microsoft VBScript runtime (0x800A01A
    Object required: 'zango' /cgi-bin/comments/webmail.asp, line 132

    We'll see if any spam starts coming in to the (unique) address that I submitted to that form.

    What this says to me though is that not only are they including JavaScript for an ad banner network, but their server side code is making references to 'zango' by name, implying a deeper relationship.

    I think it's safe to assume for the time being that Snopes probably doesn't have your best interests at heart, and to not use an e-mail address that you care about if you choose to communicate with them.

  2. Blocking Zango at the network level? by macdaddy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm sure I'm not the only one that would like to block Zango at the network level. Does anyone have the repository of information needed to create an effective block? I'm talking about RIR assignments, ASNs, SWIPed allocations, domain names, etc. Does anyone know of such a source? With this information I can ensure that none of my users ever have to put up with this Zango horse shit again.