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Snopes Pushing Zango Adware
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."
They also run spam servers... http://xkcd.com/250/
This sig is false.
Maybe I should go check an urban myth site to see if it's real...
...this is an urban legend.
Is is just a slow news day or something?
This is such a nonstory.
Adblock
All kinds of sites have those sort of crap ads. It's regrettable, but is it really news?
Stay good Snopes! Stay good!
That's funny. I visited them and didn't see a thing. But then again my adblock filter has "media.fastclick.net/*" included.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
"Pushing Zango" is Dominican slang for having sex with an elderly woman. It's true.
ObLink: http://xkcd.com/250/
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
http://xkcd.com/250/ /Obligatory
Snopes isn't something built for the common good of people, it's their to generate money, and they just happen to choose one of the darker ways to do it. "Do you want to block junk sites?"
....GetALife.com has considered using adware. HD @ 11.
Snopes has long had obnoxious levels of advertising. The site really isn't usable without AdBlock.
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
This summary is somewhat misleading, since the user actually has to click the banner to install the software. Contrary to what the summary implies, Snopes does not perform drive-by downloads on its users. By the logic of this summary, tons of online publishers "push adware," since those "Free Virus Scan" ads are pretty ubiquitous...
This message printed on 100% post-consumer recycled electrons.
A little on topic/a little bit just an excuse to blather about something in my mind since the Cloverfield story:
Folks in the ad game are in trouble. And I mean the folks using ads to sell another product and the folks selling the ads.
Apparently there was some sort of 'buzz' about Cloverfield for the past few months. I missed it. That may not be interesting, except I watch 2 to 3 hours of TV a day, spend more time than that on the web, subscribe to several popular (non-technical) magazines, and read a daily newspaper. I don't claim to have my finger on the pulse of pop culture, but I'm not quite ammish.
I vaguely remember a teaser-trailer (perhaps before Transformers?), but other than usual pre-release media push in the last few weeks, I know nothing of this buzz. If that's the state of advertising, then those folks are in trouble.
How does this tie in to the current topic? Well...Snopes has ads? I would guess it would since there's no subscription fee and would make a very strange charitable effort otherwise. But if Snopes has ads, I can't say I recall ever actually seeing one.
Seriously, for TV I have TiVo. For the web, there's ad buster and other tricks. For magazines, those ads are usually full page and very easy to recognize and skip without reading. For radio, there's NPR. Pretty much the only traditional advertising that gets my attention are bra ads in the daily paper. And those aren't even selling anything I might buy! (Unless the models are for sale.)
Since they are a bunch of filthy scammers, when they can get off their (giant) ass that is.
I know thats not too often. I mean, in all seriousness, have you see the ass on a nigger woman?
"These two popups are there practically every time you visit Snopes (see for yourself)."
Well, I did. And I didn't get any popups. I'm on refresh #30 or so.
No, I don't run adblock.
No, firefox isn't telling me it blocked a popup either.
I also tried with IE6. Still nothing.
Is the author quite sure they're not just targeting -him-? Be it my some manner of IP -> location lookup, or via an old cookie he's got laying around, or whatever?
Either that, or Snopes already changed things. Woo conspiracy theorists rejoice.
If you don't like the ads a particular ad-server gives you, make sure they're unwelcome on your network, regardless of the site hosting the ads. I make sure fastclick.net (and about 150 other unsavory domains) resolve only to 0.0.0.0 at my DNS server. If you don't run your own DNS, OpenDNS allows you to block specific domains as well.
One of the first scary emails i remember was http://www.snopes.com/risque/juvenile/lobster.asp about the woman masturbating with a lobster and all sorts of nastiness happening. That had quite the effect on this porn obsessed youth at the time
It's a non free software problem. Free software users don't have to download software from untrusted third parties. No closed source software can be trusted, so Windoze users who don't get software from Snopes ads should not feel so smug. There is very little difference between M$ and Zango.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
But he does say that since people trust Snopes that the software appears to be enorsed by Snopes. Which would lead people to go ahead and install it.
I've been running adblockplus for quite a while now and have effectively forgotten about issues like this. So have most others who would get upset by it. Of course then I'll unknowingly send friends/family to sites such as snopes without a second thought about malware concerns. To me it looked like a nice wholesome/clean site.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
Does this Zango company make an adblocker too? I recently read that they block spam email. Would you subscribe me to your posts?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Adblock, or that 80% of Slashdot readers are GNU/Linux users and that even the biggest Vista fanboy here would not install software served in a popup and they trouble themselves with a monthly wipe and reloads for that fresh M$ smell.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Holy shit! An obscure website pushing adware? Oh my god, what's gonna happen to us tomorrow? Will water fall from the sky?
I just checked on Snopes.com, it says this rumor is false and that the spyware in question comes from another source.
I just checked this out on Snopes and it ended up not being true.
Probably just a bad advertising provider than anything else. ... I get the whole "check who provides your advertisements" thing, it's a duty of the webmaster and all - but wasn't there a case where a provider only showed malicious ads outside the country of origin? Or something? Is checking even reliable?
Ethical policy here would probably just be to poke Snopes.com via their forums first...
The ambiguities of the English language provide ample motivation to English speakers to read articles. Four word headlines are often misinterpreted but those misconceptions can be corrected by doing what you did. Thanks for the good hard work.
It's funny that you would defend Snopes. Now, you might be a little put off if you try to read the Zango license. That's good because it will cause you and many people to turn away from the disreputable advertiser. Just the same, a naive user might just take the advertiser at their word and click through the little "I agree" button. Surely, you don't have people like that at your company that you might wish to warn? They will listen to your warning so that you don't have to put in rules to block Snopes, I'm sure. After all, Snopes is such a valuable workplace reference that no company could live without their least technically sophisticated employees having constant access to it.
Talk about a user-unfriendly feature! They use some very annoying javascript to disable the ability to select a portion of text. No idea why...
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
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.
Snopes claims it's an urban legend.
I get the same result. I thought I had sent my complaint (reference this post via their web form, but upon clicking back over to that tab I noticed the same error you got. So, to contact them about Zango's abusive business practices, I have to install Zango's abusive software to interact with their server, or it generates an error? Wow. Somebody's smoking some good stuff at Snopes. WHIOS has the following registry data for snopes.com:
:
Administrative Contact , Technical Contact
Mikkelson, David
snopes@best.com
P.O. Box 684
Agoura Hills, CA 91376
US
Phone: (702) 988-4047
Fax: (818) 261-3054
The phone number appears to ring to offices at "best.com", who says their offices are presently closed and offer to take a message. Keying "best.com" into your browser will redirect to Verio. And round and round we go. I think I'll send a fax to the number listed in WHOIS.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
A quick primer in online advertising, for those of you who block it:
At one end of the chain, we have Content Provider A. At the other end of the chain, we have Service Provider Z. Z wants to place advertising on A's site but, importantly, doesn't know how to do it, doesn't generally know specifically who A is, and needs this to scale to potentially thousands of As. This is where participants B, C, D, E, F, Google, H... etc come in. There are advertising aggregators, affiliate networks, affiliates, affiliates of affiliates, affiliates of affilates of networks of affiliates who subdivide the advertising market into smaller and smaller slices before it finally gets on A's site.
Now, somewhere in the chain, let us inject one person who is less than scrupulous. He doesn't work at Snopes -- this would tarnish a brand for a week's worth of income, not a smart play. He probably has a steady stream of relationships with each of the numerous advertising concerns on the Internet, picking up and moving from one after he has collected a check or three and then had the banstick for TOS violations catch up with him. He is the one working for, most probably, affiliate of an affiliate of an affiliate of Zango.
This is the way most malware makes its way onto ad networks and, from there, onto high-trust sites. Volokh Conspiracy, one of my favorite blogs, had a nasty browser hijacker which affected non-US users for months before their advertising network caught wind of it. A few popular MMORPG sites have ended up hosting keyloggers in the same fashion. It is an unintended consequence of a system without central control -- much like the Internet itself, actually. (The system being split up this way does have its advantages, for both endpoints of the chain and for everybody between. Google's business model is based on snapping the chain and replacing it with a big cloud labeled Gooooooogle, but they're not yet the only game in town.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I just checked on Snopes and this whole thing is a hoax, so there's no need to worry.
would be snope's credibility circling the drain...
I've been meaning to block those for a while now...
It might be Adblock Plus, then. It automatically prompts upon your first Firefox load (after installing the addon, of course) for a subscription server. After that, you don't need to touch a thing. I didn't know Snopes (or most sites for that matter) even ran ads until I saw this article.
You're right, they have every right to be creepy, and you and I have every right to bitch about it, and put pressure on them to quit being creepy.
hosts file
and JcoderS
Several months ago. But my Wikipedia edits (complete with verifiable references) were quickly undone by Snopes fanboys.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Claim: Snopes are in bed with Fastclick, which serve ads via Snopes.
Status: Irrelevant
Examples:
[Collected via Sunbelt Blog 2008]
[F]or a long time now (probably at least a year), I've noticed that they are in bed with Fastclick, which in turn constantly serves one annoying ad on Snopes.
Origins: All joking aside, despite Sunbelt Software passing themselves off as vendors of anti-spamware, they have a sordid spammy past themselves. Go to http://groups.google.com/ enter the newsgroup `news.admin.net-abuse.email' and search for keywords "Sunbelt" "spam"/"spamming".
Cheers
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
All I see when I go there is: "Privoxy blocked http://www.snopes.com/common/include/adsdaqsky.asp."
The internet is a beautiful place when you remove all the crap.
If people only knew this was an option there would be riots in the streets.
My email contains no spam and my browser contains no ads. Things don't pop up, under, slide around or tell me to "Punch the monkey". Life is good.
Don't you mean [citation needed]? :-)
(Or at least "By whom?" to satisfy the grammar nazis.)
I didn't know snopes had ads. If people would run an ad blocker, perhaps they wouldn't get hit.
Could it be everyone smart enough not to fall for urban legend forwards is also smart enough to block adware?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
"You're not a moron, are you? Why would you want me to think that?"
Whatever your point(s), why would anyone care what a random guy on the internet thinks?
If you answer that, I'll answer your question.
I always assume, and I could be wrong, that m$ is a way for someone to say "I remember windows95 !", while pointing to their tattoo of tux screaming 'Live free or die !'.
Fanatic more than moron.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You already posted in this thread. The fact that you use sockpuppets to get around the 2-post per day restriction for negative karma accounts does not mean you have a free reign to shill your own comments on the same threads of the same articles.
I tried to download the trial version, but Net Nanny had it blocked.
---WAIT!!! --- Sites have Ads?!!? next you'll be telling me that there are still pop-ups on the web.
I love AdBlock. Before today I had no idea snopes had advertising!
All pardons to Guns N roses:
"What we have here is a failure to communicate."
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Checking the "snopes.com" page source code, there's Javascript from "as.casalemedia.com". This is Casale Media, a Toronto-based firm. "We provide web users with relevant, personalized advertising that adds value to the browsing experience. ... The network serves more than 30 billion ads every month to users in 200 countries." Something else to add to the list of advertising server domains.
I'm not getting a Zango popup, or any popups, or even a Firefox popup warning, though.
Try LittleSnitch outbound firewall. You'll realize just how bad ZoneAlarm is.
Linux
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
While most of articles on Snopes are at least somewhat correct, it contains some amount of opinions and apologism that have nothing to do with dispelling urban myths. Ex:
http://www.snopes.com/business/alliance/coors.asp
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Hmm... Firefox no script and adblock keeps me ignorant.
How sweet it is.
Oh wait was I supposed to say something witty here?!?
I don't get it. What's the point of linking Snopes with adware? They run a website and they are trying to make money, so what? Is there some sort of correlation between Snopes (urban legends reference) and malware that would make Snopes look hypocritical? Maybe it's this particular adware? Somebody please explain.
Given the earlier statement that a Wikipedia entry had been altered to hide the Snopes/Malware connection, it seems to me that it's unlikely the people running the site are unaware of the predatory advertising practice occurring under their aegis.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I'm with you 100%.
Besides, I don't see ads, I use Opera!
Only a moron would think spelling it "Windoze" and "M$" makes anyone else a moron. You're a moron M$ fanboy.
Harden the fuck up.
I use almost exclusively linux so when I encounter ads that purport to scan my .dlls and then find spyware, I make a point to inform the main site that one of their advertisers is being blatantly dishonest at the minimum and probably infecting PCs with malware. I simply note that such advertising seems to be below their otherwise high standards and it is a disappointment. I have observed some sites actually taking the ads down.
And this happened.
At the bottom of that flame article there's a link saying that Snopes had stopped pushing those ads, so this story was already old and obsolete before it was posted. http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/update-on-snopes-pushing-adware.html
The Mikkelsons -- or at least one of their "subalterns" -- are not the nicest or the most honest people in the world. They do NOT like to be questioned, or called on any questionable practices. Some of the items they have up -- notably in the "glurge" section, the item on the risks faced by the Founders in rebelling against the Crown -- depart sharply from the usual "nothing but the facts, m'am" in favor of politically motivated shibboleths passed off as "debunking".
When I called them on it, I got what looked like the most bizarre form letter I've ever seen ("form" because it didn't seem to be related to my initial email at all), filled with paranoid screeching about "my subalterns" (it's where I learned that word, ironically) as if I were somehow the master of perpetrator of urban legends.
WTF? I emailed them back about that "form letter" to ask if some wacko had hacked their mail server, but all I got back was a snarky "No, THIS is a form letter!", which it plainly was after that.
I put it down to the well-known bomber pilot's maxim: you know you're over the target when you start getting flak.
I spent Sunday afternoon wrestling with my neighbor's XP box to get it functioning after a mass of malware infections. I got rid of everything except the above mentioned Zango / Fastclick stuff. Every time IE opens, two more windows open on ads that rotate automatically. AdAware did not find these. I told him to keep updating AdAware daily and scanning, thinking they might find a way to get rid of it.
Anybody have a removal process? Again, it's Windows XP and IE (was 6, I just upgraded him to 7).
AdTHANKSvance!
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
You're a douchebag.
Why hasn't somebody taken action against them, and why do people use the site, do they just not realise what has happened to their pc?
How does Linus's penis taste?
As a matter of fact, I emailed them about this very problem last November. Their response was that "folks were copying the text of our articles and circulating them in e-mail, despite our copyright notices and even our asking them to stop." I will concur that not being able to even select text is extremely annoying, along the lines of a dialog saying "Copyright 1992" when you right-click. Unless, of course, you've got NoScript.
I won't mess with your revenue model if you won't serve pr0n ads or hide sneaky code, 'k?
"A witty saying proves nothing." -- Voltaire