Advertisers May Face Ridicule For Adware

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."

Wet bus ticket

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

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.

whoa

FTC actually siding with the people, instead of corp america??? Whoa, looks like pigs can now free to fly..

Not entirely.

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...

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?

Re:Wonderful idea, but could get sticky...

For example, is a piece of software that "phones home" for ANY reason considered spyware?

If it is without the knowledge of the user, then yes, that is pretty much the definition of spyware.

If a program pops a dialog up and says, it wants to know if its ok to send DoubleClick all my history urls and cookies and then I click yes and it phones home... Then well... I'm just dumb, but thats not spyware.

Re:Wonderful idea, but could get sticky...

For example, is a piece of software that "phones home" for ANY reason considered spyware?
Is this an oblique reference to the latest version of ITunes ? (or the Firfox+GoogleToolbar combo which phones home upon sucessful installation?)

Free advertising?

"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.

No such thing as bad publicity.

Re:Sounds like free advertising.

No such thing as bad publicity.

I don't know about that. How is SCO doing these days with all that free advertising we gave them?

Honestly....

It might be a bit of a band-aid, but, I'd be satisfied if my clients would face public ridicule for adware...

Finally, someone to stop these shameless people

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

That's a start..

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!!!

They should hire John Cleese for the ad campaign

{Nothing typed here would be as humorous as just the notion of someone turning Cleese loose to ridicule these clowns!}

Forget the advertisers

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.

Deeper Issues

"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!

Is that all?

I would've gone the "drawn and quartered" route myself

actually a clever idea!

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>

Hint, Hint, Hint

I suspect this is nothing more than a gimmick to help politicians collect more "contributions".

Worried about being investigated?
Can't face the shame?
We can help.

This is an out...

FTFA Keeping track of contractors

Just seeing that headline made me cringe. I've gotten the run around so many times by company's because they said "No, it's not our problem. We contract that out to a firm to do that."

Yeah, yeah, I KNOW that they're (the original companies)responsible, but trying to get around the clerks and middle mgt. I usually have to make some sort of complaint to some regulator. They just then say "Fix it." to the company that wouldn't take responsibility.

What I'm trying to say is, these firms are just going to say it was a subcontractor to a contractor. Then they say, we'll investigate. At most get a slap on the wrist. Some free publicity. (all publicity is good publicity - isn't that how it goes?) And JQ public forgets about it - that's assuming he even cares.

I'm going to just sake my head now and put it in the oven.

I saw the mispelling of "shake" and thought "sake is good too!"

Good for them

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

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

I'm fur it

OTOH, a public stoning would probably be far more effective. Until then, can we have a punitve fine law that makes it a whole lot less appealing to do these underhanded, often illegal tricks just because the legendary Joe SixPack doesn't know how to protect his machine?

I'd suggest $10 million per instance, such as per each single title cd release because anything less will be be treated as a cost of doing business to these low life jerks. Maybe thats not enough, but done often enough it will send a message around thats at least as effective as sending Luigi and Anthony around with a violin case thats strangely heavy and has the potential to make a lot of noise in stacato bursts. I'll posit that the violin case solution would be more permanent though. :)

If any of these low lifes are reading this, can you figure out that we're pi$$ed? And that your sales are down because we're pi$$ed? No? Then I submit you can't read either... I don't buy ANYTHING that doesn't have the Phillips owned trademark Compact Disk Logo on it. End of discussion AFAIC.

--
Cheers, Gene

Which spyware apps?

Which specific adware/spyware applications is the FTC going to track? Will every company advertising in every single ad delivered via desktop software be shamed?

What difference?

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

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...

"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)

Wow

Won't this just be free advertising for those companies that use adware?? Two for the price of one!

How about aiding and abetting?

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.

Another idea for companies...

What's to stop companies for putting bogus ads up for other companies to get those companies on everyones' shit-lists?

Antispyware activism

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]

Perfect!

What a great plan! Public exposure: Just what the companies wanted.

Best way to attack spyware adware companies

is to attack their CEOs salaries, bonus, options, benefits, and retirement plans.

Nothing else will change their behavior.

free advertising

So the FCC's answer seems to be to provide free shameful advertising to prevent paid shameful advertising....

Sounds all warm and fuzzy...

...but It's not reality. Just send a few bucks by the way of a Jack Abramhoff talk-a-like and your back in business.

BTM

i hate spammers

and i don't care if you mod me -1 offtopic, troll or flamebait. some things have to be said and i need to rant.

i run a small website, this website has a few user comment areas. the comments are in plain text only. if you enter html, it gets stripped. urls are not converted into links.

people have been automatically spamming the site with links to phentermine and god knows what else, so I implemented a CAPTCHA solution that I wrote in PHP. they now spam me with broken html to bypass the captcha*. never, ever has any of their spam actually turned into html. no users have ever clicked their links, because there are no links to click. these guys just don't get it.

My point is that they'll continue spamming uselessly forever, they won't care about this 'public shaming' because they're the lowest of the low already.

blargh. i give up, i really do.

* i only ask users to pass the captcha if it looks like a url they're entering; i think captchas are annoying so i try to allow people to comment without having to enter one.

Blacklist of Internet Advertisers

Well, I tried this approach many years ago to deal with usenet and email spam: The Blacklist of Internet Advertisers [archive.org]. Painfully obvious to all of us, it was a spectacular failure.

fines? jail?

why not fine these guys? surely that'd be better than funding their advertising campaigns

Ob Holy Grail Quote

Now go away before I taunt you a second time!

forgive them not, for they know exactly what...

Advertising is at best a huge waste of time and at worst a vile influence on the world.

But adware really is the absolute nadir of this filthy business.

As a whole the amount of time that is wasted dealing with disinfecting computers must be collosal.

The notion of naming and shaming is a bit mild...a better response would be to add up the number of hours that these culprits waste and then to 'reclaim' this time by eradicating the staff of these firms, from the top down. Nothing fancy, just fly them over a large and cold body of water, e.g. the north sea and then push them out of the plane.

Those that put together the malware deserve to be broken on the wheel, and nothing less, to make them an example. It may seem harsh but rough justice is whats needed here.

I believe the term is "Joe Job"

So... um... what's stopping a malicious spyware author (so... a spyware author) from... shall we say... "advertising" for a company he or she doesn't like, thus placing said company on this list (for the sake of argument, assume this company is innocent)? What's the innocent company going to do, try explaining that they don't advertise with spyware/adware and don't have any hidden programming shops for such a purpose?

And if such an explanation flies, what would stop a malicious company from making a hidden programming shop to make spyware/adware and denying any knowledge of it?

Something's just not adding up with this.

Liberace put it best...

They'll be crying all the way to the bank.

Standard form of reply applies here

Your post advocates a

( ) technical (x) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(x) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) Extreme profitability of spam
(X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(x) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

FTC is so wrong on this....

...do you really think that a company that advertises through adware could be embarassed? They'll count all the impressions the FTC provides through their "embarassment campaign" as free advertising.

No Shame in Shaming

This is brilliant. Almost every Marketing Director will now have to consider that if there is a policy to allow adware advertising, he's losing his job when the company has to spend twice as much on PR to claim they're not really evil. The trick will be to shame them one at a time at a televised press conference if they don't agree to cease and desist immediately instead of "shaming" so many that it becomes acceptable.

You know if there were a weekly live shaming on TV that you'd watch too.

Would the World Bank be listed too?

I remember the bit about the World bank leveraging thier code into a lot of scanner drivers and pgorams like Photoshop to indentify money being scanned (including a module to snich on whoever was doing it) to thwart counterfitters.

Or is that not not considered spyware?

The lengths some people go to.....

For the money those guys make, they'd let you pee on their heads. Public humiliation won't phase them.

2 cents,

Queen B

Delimbed and castrated

The offenders would have their genitalia burned off as robotic arms ripped off their legs and beat them senseless with them.

And just how does one shame adware advertisers?

What exactly is the FTC planning to do to shame adware companies? Aren't most of them sleazy businesses selling penis pumps or fly-by-nights paying to have their advertisements plastered over images on the web sites of legitimate businesses? If a business is pathetic enough to stoop to advertising via adware, chances are that the FTC won't have much luck with embarassment as a deterrent.

About fuckin' time...

I know that some people would like to see the spammers go to jail but they hide and try to maintain a low profile. Besides, they're only in it for the bucks.

But attack the 'penis pill pushers' who hire these spammers, ridicule will do for a start, and they'll stop wasting their money on spammers.

That will nip the problem in the bud...

It would be more effective to...

Publicly shame the person who installs adware. You may say that the average user does not know when he is installing adware/spyware, but if he is shamed enough for accidentally doing so, he would be one of the many to demand that software companies do not bundle ad/spyware into their programs, and companies are more likely to listen to the masses (when the masses are more than a bunch of techies). Don't take this solution seriously, but it's probably true.

1) John installs spyware.
2) The program or IT person that cleans it off his computer send his name to a governing office.
3) Office plants a big sign in John's yard that says "I installed Spyware when I was downloading Baywatch pictures."
4) Neighbor sees it. Laughs. Worries about his own yard.
5) Everyone will be scared to install software without a professional. Any company that promotes adware/spyware won't stand a chance.

Joe jobs

So adware companies will simply start inserting random company advertisements into their rotation. That way, there's no way to tell if a company should be ridiculed or not. Don't like a particular company? Create an ad and pay some spyware dude $100 to show it to everybody.
 

"Public shame"?!?! Why not prison?

Public humiliation? Why not prison?

I still don't know why the WinFixer guys aren't in jail. It's been on my wife's laptop for a year, and Microsoft's anti-spyware can't make a dent in it (oh, it can find and remove VirtuMundo, but it can't stop it from reinstalling itself!)

And yes, I've tried several web sites. I look for the files they say to delete and they aren't even on my computer (and I do have hidden files, system files, et al. showing.)

You forget two points

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? :)

Decades behind

Oh, come on...they just stole this idea [taipeitimes.com] from the Chinese!

Is the U.S. government going to resort to Communism next?!?

- RG>

Re:Lies.

The article is disingenuous, I'll give you that.

It's easy to have a policy you don't implement. It's even easier to say you have a policy that you can quite implement. From the article:

AOL has a policy not to advertise using adware. To maintain that policy, the company has to keep close tabs on those companies that handle its advertising, Polonetsky said.

In other words, Polonetsky says, AOL keeps tabs on those who handle its advertising, but hey, you know, you can't catch'em all.

Already advertisers face pressure from consumers not to promote their products or services using adware or other software that consumers may not want on their PC, said Jules Polonetsky, vice president of integrity assurance at America Online.

"Increasingly advertisers are recognizing that this is not a minor issue," Polonetsky said. "There is already an environment out there where prominent advertisers' missteps are being written about."

How does he know this? From all the hate mail AOL receives for its annoying adware, may be?