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Advertisers May Face Ridicule For Adware

Posted by Zonk on Fri Feb 10, 2006 06:29 PM
from the waking-up-to-reality dept.
The Internet Security
An anonymous reader writes "A ZDNet article reports that the FTC may be gearing up to humiliate companies that advertise via adware." From the article: "The FTC would publicly announce and publish the name of a company that advertises using adware that installs itself surreptitiously on consumer PCs or using spyware, Leibowitz said. He would recommend publicly shaming advertisers to the other FTC commissioners if the adware problem doesn't decrease, he said."
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  • Wet bus ticket (Score:5, Funny)

    by imoou (949576) on Friday February 10 2006, @06:31PM (#14691271) Homepage
    Wow, public shaming is as severe as hitting those offenders with a wet bus ticket or a tap on the knuckles.

    Wake me up when there's a public stoning.

    • Re:Wet bus ticket (Score:5, Funny)

      by Jambon (880922) on Friday February 10 2006, @06:49PM (#14691406) Journal
      Wake me up when there's a public stoning.

      Dude, that would be awesome. However, man, I can't really see the DEA being chill with that. I mean, that would be a lot of weed.

      • In my home town the cops seized around 400lbs of weed on a boat.. reported in the news paper when and when they would be disposing of it by burnning it in the inconrator (which was down down)

        that whole damn city block was covered with people.. and it was a good day for the people on the west side.... (off shore wind :)
    • Wow, public shaming is as severe as hitting those offenders with a wet bus ticket or a tap on the knuckles.

      Hrm... I've heard that in Japan, that public shaming is usually followed by ritual suicide.

      Perhaps we should encourage the practice ;)
    • Advertise to me and I shall taunt you a second time!

  • whoa (Score:5, Funny)

    by MasterOfUniverse (812371) on Friday February 10 2006, @06:32PM (#14691279)
    FTC actually siding with the people, instead of corp america??? Whoa, looks like pigs can now free to fly..
    • They can still censor who would be listed... And I hardly doubt that CNN is going to report on all the annoyances like "Hyperglobalmeganet"

      Nothing to see here, move along.

    • Not entirely. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jd (1658) <imipak AT yahoo DOT com> on Friday February 10 2006, @07:14PM (#14691525) Homepage Journal
      First, there's a possibility that the FCC will charge for some names, or not include them at all - especially if asked by a nice gentleman with a large check in his hand. Second, said gentleman may also nicely request certain competitors be listed to damage their credibility. The FCC can always say it made a mistake, or claim that a media outlet added to the list.


      (Name-and-shame suffers from two big problems. First, there's no actual requirement for there to be any evidence of Adware. The FCC doesn't have to prove a case to anyone, it only has to write down a name. Second, if a name is put down that shouldn't be there, redress will be next to impossible. The media outlets can claim - justifiably - that they're not responsible for official statements from Government. I know of nobody who has sued the Federal Government in civil court for slander or libel, and they've probably got immunity to such suits anyway.)


      Actually, there is a better method and the Supreme Court provided it. The Government is allowed to seize private land for the purpose of boosting the economy in a region, under a recent interpretation of Eminent Domain. Adware companies damage the Internet economy. It would seem to follow that the Government can seize those companies and sell them to other, less malign, individuals. (It's less messy than the hung-drawn-and-quartered method someone else proposed, too.)

  • Wonderful idea, but could get sticky... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Audigy (552883) on Friday February 10 2006, @06:32PM (#14691281) Homepage Journal
    I can see it now... review sites all over the 'net mention this as the first item in a review of a piece of software:

    Spyware: YES

    Then again... there may be some problems related to what is considered spyware and what's not. For example, is a piece of software that "phones home" for ANY reason considered spyware?

  • Free advertising? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 10 2006, @06:33PM (#14691293)
    "The FTC would publicly announce and publish the name of a company that advertises using adware that installs itself surreptitiously on consumer PCs or using spyware..."

    Thereby granting said company immense public exposure and advertising...

  • Sounds like free advertising. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 10 2006, @06:33PM (#14691296)
    No such thing as bad publicity.

  • By... ummm... shaming them... umm... wait.. I think I see a possible flaw in this plan.

    • ...free advertising, which is the entire onject of adware in the first place. That being the case, name-and-shame would seem to be self-defeating. (One city in the US tried using name-and-shame to cut down on prostitution, but the scheme was abandoned when those involved twisted the scheme into promoting the services instead.)

      This is not a useful method of solving adware - or anything that depends on publicity to thrive. I'm not sure what remedy would work, but you're never going to feed Adware to death.

    • Joe Shmoe home-user doesn't know what programs are spyware and what aren't. Most people are beginning to realize now that there are programs out there that are bad, though. Giving people information as to which programs are bad for their computer usually results in them not using said programs.

      It's true that even bad publicity can be good, but don't underestimate the power of information.

  • That's a start.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slashkitty (21637) on Friday February 10 2006, @06:34PM (#14691301) Homepage
    They should also complete the loop and list companies that get paid to advertise Adware. High on the list of those companies is Google. I believe that they make millions advertising adware on their search results and through their adsense network. I'm sure that Yahoo and other big ad networks are also to blame. Worse yet, they are often misleading. Searching google for spyware removers gets you ads for more spyware!!!
    • Searching google for spyware removers gets you ads for more spyware!!!


      I think the technical term for that is "money machine"

      a.k.a. "magic money machine"
    • Searching google for spyware removers gets you ads for more spyware!!!

      True, but at least lavasoft (adaware) is the #1 search result :)
      I searched for "spyware remover".
    • That's what we DON'T want them to do - list companies that are not part of the problem (people's machines becoming unusable through crapware) but who technically meet some definition of "spyware vendors". This will undermine the credibility of the initiative, which is to call attention to companies participating in abusive practices.
  • {Nothing typed here would be as humorous as just the notion of someone turning Cleese loose to ridicule these clowns!}

  • Forget the advertisers (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Khyber (864651) <khyberkitsune@gmail.com> on Friday February 10 2006, @06:37PM (#14691323) Journal
    Publically shame the company responsible for producing the spyware/malware/adware/rootkits as well! Then shame every company that chooses to advertise or use those products themselves (For example, F4I should be shamed, with many many references to Sony's crap thrown in as relevant pieces of the puzzle) and then slam the NAMES of the people that wrote these programs, so the entire PUBLIC is aware of the malicious and annoying people.
      • Sorry, I'd tend to believe that most coders have a code of ethics or at least a set of personal morals. Those coders that write the spyware intentionally make it malicious. Of course they're doing what they're told, and if they actually cared, they'd NOT DO IT. I type this as I have a coder behind me reading along.

  • Deeper Issues (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Max Threshold (540114) on Friday February 10 2006, @06:38PM (#14691325)
    "The deeper issue, [spam lord Trevor] Hughes said, is the way online advertising is handled. Many companies let a third party take care of their advertising and that company may delegate even further, involving many people and companies before an ad gets placed."

    This isn't just an issue for spamvertisers. Delegating fundamental business processes (e.g., customer billing) to third parties seems to be a popular with all sorts of companies as a means of obfuscating procedures and dodging responsibility for mistakes. I call bullshit on all of it!

  • I would've gone the "drawn and quartered" route myself
    • I'll place my vote under the "drawn and quartered" category along with Mr. Reason, but only if it's a public drawing and quartering and they sell decent beer and popcorn...and if the executed has to pay all costs associated with his drawing and quartering, including my beer and popcorn...and if they use really big trucks to do the pulling in low-and-slow gear, not wimpy horses who might bolt at the sound of a cheering audience.

      Cheers. So who's first?

  • Think about it, these companies are trying to advertise their services, right? So when someone with the muscle and clout of the FTC comes along (how many Ad Council ads have you seen this week? probably more than you might realize) and starts advertising that certain companies are breaking Grandma's computer, what's the chance of said companies selling anymore products?

    Brilliant! Brilliant! <clink>
  • Now everyone will hear about their products. They don't care about public opinion. Imagine what the users infected with their adware think of them. That's the exposure they wanted, and now they'll get it on a larger scale.

  • I think this is a very good idea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ZorroXXX (610877) <hlovdalNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday February 10 2006, @06:47PM (#14691392)
    When the government fears the public, you have democracy.
    When the public fears the government, you have tyranny.

    Perhaps a weak analogy, but if companies started seriously fearing public opinion - as opposed to say Sony BMG[1] - that would certainly be a good thing.

    Fear of the public will stimulate healthy competition (and not under the table/behind closed doors competition).

    [1]
    Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?
    --SonyBMG manager Thomas Hesse

    • Companies will fear the public when the public cares enough to quit buying their crap. They care about money, and not much else. Why should Sony care what people think if their sales are still doing great?
    • ...but if companies started seriously fearing public opinion ...

      They won't. The public has too a short of a memory.

    • What someone fears, they will seek to destroy. The Government already fears the public. The results are obvious. No, the Government fearing the public will ALSO lead to tyranny. It will be the only way for said Government to deal with those fears. (Tianaman Square wasn't a result of the public fearing the Government...)

      Mutual respect is the obvious answer. Respect doesn't threaten and doesn't fear threats. Getting mutual respect is going to be tough - I'm not convinced any existing system is capable of it -

  • Let's face it, what difference would this list make? Would you bother to read it? And what would you to the companys in the list? Boycott everyone?

    I find it easier trying to stay out of the adware itself :)

  • We, as 'smart' users need to Class-Action (Score:3, Interesting)

    by brxndxn (461473) on Friday February 10 2006, @07:00PM (#14691468)
    The lot of us that hates spyware the most need to get a couple Class-Action lawsuits going against the adware/spam companies and the companies that benefit from them. Isn't it already illegal to install backdoors and software that users did not authorize? Isn't it already illegal to take control of a computer (called hacking, right?)??

    Why do the makers of worms/viruses get huge criminal punishments and the companies that make money off of adware get 'embarassment'?

    If these were reputable companies in the first place, the old adage of "All publicity is good publicity" would not apply. We, as 'smart' users, owe it to the rest of the computing community to do our research, find out who is involved, and sue them until they bleed red.

    Hell.. we could get a Wiki going of spyware (if there already isn't one), and which companies are involved, what addresses, countries, etc.. And then start hiring some lawyers to make lots of money off of our suffering..

    I don't wanna be the one to start it, though. Fucking fuck. This porno site just popped up and Internet Explorer crashed. I gotta go.

  • From TFA... (Score:3)

    by keraneuology (760918) on Friday February 10 2006, @07:20PM (#14691552) Journal
    "There are well-intentioned advertisers out there that do not understand where their ads are appearing"

    And I'm supposed to care about this... because?

    I don't care if knows that the company they have hired to spamvertise are spammers or not. I think should be punished for allowing their product to be allowed for spam. Just as I don't care if a mortgage broker knows that his leads came from blast faxes or spam - I am all for honeypots that lead to hefty fines against brokers who purchase spam-solicited ads. (Or, better yet, a law requiring any mortgage broker who responds to actually give me that 30 year, 0 down $300,000 loan for $500/month)

  • How about aiding and abetting? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 10 2006, @07:24PM (#14691580)
    Here's a better idea:

    1. Spyware/Adware is essentially unauthorized use of a computer system. I'm pretty sure this is well-defined as a criminal act. (the electronic equivalent of breaking and entering)

    2. Paying Adware companies to partake in their venture via advertisement = aiding & abetting, or conspiring to commit illegal acts, or whatever you want to call it.

    This "public shaming" by the FTC is laughable. They'd have been better off doing NOTHING than doing something that all but concedes that they have no power (or at least no political will) to actually stop these acts that they obviously disapprove of.

  • Antispyware activism (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jaypcross (953582) on Friday February 10 2006, @07:31PM (#14691618)
    One technique that seems to get under spyware author's skin is when you bother them at home or on some other form of their own turf. When my best friend and I were leading the charge against Xupiter we spent countless manhours tracing the network of entities responsible for the software and staged multiple phone calls to the home residences of business partners, requests for information from ad affiliates, etc. Lots of WHOIS cross-referencing and corporate document searches but it was worth it to genuinely make life uncomfortable for these guys. Saied Yomtobian called me every dirty name in the book when all I did was ask a few questions about his son being listed on a corporate document for "Xupiter, Inc." listed with the California Secretary of State. It was common practice for us to track down the responsible parties and publish transcripts of our findings. Would be interesting to know the legality of publishing recorded phone calls between angry end users and spyware authors. I think the path to a spyware-free web is public humiliation of the offenders. A multitude of websites already exist toward this end but I think some good old-fashioned activism should be done and its progress published for the world to see. Another thing I did a year or so back was trace the money trail of a piece of spyware that hijacked Google search results. Upon infection I identified the ad affiliate responsible for the hijacked ads inside some source code, documented our findings to the affiliate and got them to terminate their contract with the spyware vendor. It was a good week or two before the vendor (Clientman/Odysseus Marketing) found a new affiliate. I'd guess that that cost them a lot of money in lost ad revenue. I like the idea of a continually updated Wiki where people can collaborate and take action. http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,60694-1. html?tw=wn_story_page_next1 [wired.com]
  • What a great plan! Public exposure: Just what the companies wanted.
  • is to attack their CEOs salaries, bonus, options, benefits, and retirement plans.

    Nothing else will change their behavior.

  • Ob Holy Grail Quote (Score:3, Funny)

    by akpoff (683177) on Friday February 10 2006, @08:37PM (#14691896) Homepage
    Now go away before I taunt you a second time!
    • a) They don't get revenue for this, and
      b) They don't get their PRODUCTS advertised, either. Just their name in a blacklist.

      Sincerely, we've all heard about spyware companies suing antivirus for blacklisting them. Can they sue the FTC, now? :)

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