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Zango Caught in Lies About MySpace?
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jul 28, 2006 05:47 PM
from the bad-ango-thingie dept.
from the bad-ango-thingie dept.
An anonymous reader writes to mention that Zango's still under suspicion for problems on MySpace. ZDNet has the story, discussing rumours of multiple accounts, paid Zango hawkers, and mass emailings. From the article: "Boyd posted some choice snippets from the email, like this: 'Zango is fairly new with myspace sites and it took me some time to see what works and what doesn't ... more profitably, *go to a bunch of your friends* who have popular profiles and pay them (it's up to you so much. One of my partners said 5$..maybe offer to split the money with them?) to put a zango video into their profile through your site. This will give you hundreds of extra installs a day (this probably works even better than having them on your actual site).'"
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Adware Spreads Through Myspace 209 comments
Sandbagger writes "Here's an interesting problem for MySpace — groups of websites that entice MySpace users into placing videos onto their profile pages (under the guise of 'free content'), without disclosing a key piece of information that might make them think twice. When someone visits one of these profiles carrying the video, a DRM acquisition box pops up and attempts to install Zango adware. In all likelihood, the profile owners don't even know these videos are doing this to their visitors. The end result is an Adware affiliate effectively removing himself from the distribution chain and letting kids promote these videos instead, in a strange example of viral marketing gone wrong."
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Zango Under Fire From Adult Webmasters 93 comments
An anonymous reader writes, "Over the past few days, adult webmasters have been accusing adware maker Zango of 'stealing sales' by means of the following method: Computer users with Zango's adware on board will pop open a window containing the affiliate merchant's site they happen to be on at the time, except with Zango's own affiliate code in the window. By doing this, Zango claims credit for the sale and the original, rule-following merchant, the one who referred the user there, loses out. Despite this practice having been around since at least 2004, it seems the adult webmasters are only just realizing this takes place — surprising, considering how deeply connected the worlds of adware and porn are. It seems pornographers pushing adware is acceptable only as long as they aren't the ones getting burnt. Part of me doesn't care, and part of me hopes they carry the financial clout to force Zango to change their current practices."
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FTC Fines Zango $3 Million 77 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Wired is reporting that government regulators have fined rogue adware distributor Zango (formerly 180Solutions) $3 million. This is 'following charges that the company deceived internet users into installing its pop-up software and tried to prevent them from uninstalling it.' ZDNet mentions that 'Zango's executives pointed a finger elsewhere, claiming that the federal violations were due to third-party distributors rather than the software manufacturer itself.' Security researchers are still happily finding examples of Zango software being popped open in rogue distributions such as IM worms. Ben Edelman is claiming to have more evidence of their dubious business practices, casting into question their claims of newfound affiliate responsibility."
[+]
Will Zango Ever Clean Up Their Affiliates?
An anonymous reader writes "Since the FTC fined Zango $3 Million dollars for deceptive installs, security researchers have made a seemingly endless amount of finds with regards dubious Zango affiliates and business practices. Hot on the heels of the fake Youtube videos discovered by Websense earlier in the week comes another foray into Myspace for Zango, via a program of (extremely) limited functionality being spammed across Myspace profiles with the overall aim of people downloading Zango Adware. The program's EULA is also highly suspect, giving the company behind the program the right to spam messages to whoever they want, whenever they want, install Adware whenever they choose and lay the blame of these spam messages entirely at the feet of the end user should the service being used to spam complain about it. In the face of mounting evidence, when will Zango actually hold their hands up and admit their affiliate program is actually still as poor as it ever was?"
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Zango Caught in Lies About MySpace?
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I for one... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I for one... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I for one... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I for one... (Score:4, Funny)
Tonight? Um, I'm busy.... (Score:3, Funny)
(http://geeksplosion.blogspot.com/)
Good thing he's not me.
Braindead marketing practices (Score:5, Funny)
The email contains the following fun snippet:
2) MOVING GIFS. This really gets peoples attention and vistors love this shit. Heres an example of a perfect site: www.free-extras.com
Look at the karate guy doing flips: its awesome. Click on it: it links to a gallery of a 100 zango videos. THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD DO. Its simple, cool, and WAYYYY more profitable. Find a moving gif online and put it on your site. Make it link to a gallery.
Ok, what fucking planet do they live on, and more importantly, WHY HASN'T IT BEEN DESTROYED YET?
Re:Braindead marketing practices (Score:5, Insightful)
-a frequent web user
-not exactly computer savy
-able to live with pop-up ads and flashing colors 24/7
-unaware of the consequences of clicking yes to a dialog
sounds a lot like the typical myspace user doesn't it?
Fer Shame... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.dragonswest.com/ | Last Journal: Monday November 05, @07:35PM)
Caught in a web of their own lies, like common politicians.
Seems to me it's up to MySpace to either condone this sort of thing or ban users for it, never mind what the weasels at Zango do or say.
Re:Fer Shame... (Score:4, Funny)
See... it was all just an honest mistake. You know we have all accidently tried to force feed people adware at one time or another, it's a natural human thing to do.
I dunno... (Score:1, Funny)
I'm out.
Zango's underhanded marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
Keenspot suffered massive outrage, and coldly responded that they outsource their advertising to the Burstnet company, which used iFrames to distribute their ads, so they had no control over it, and that everyone is evil and stealing when they use Firefox's AdBlock.
The next time I encountered them was when I went to the website Newgrounds, which apparently had become infested with spyware since the last time I visited, and said I needed to install Zango to access portions of the site. This spyware problem was in the Wikipedia entry for a few months, but now it appears to have been removed?
The last time, incidentally, was when I was searching Wikipedia. I came across this revision [wikipedia.org] of a Wikipedia article on Zango Messenger, a spyware laden IM service made by Zango. Look how glowing its review is. Wikipedia records the IP addresses of every user that edits when they aren't logged in, and when you look at the IP address that made the edit, you will see that the address traces back to a company by the name of "180 SOLUTIONS HOOKED-2", with 180 Solutions being the company's old name!
It's hosted by Time Warner Telecom, by the way. That's another reason not to use AOL.
Re:Zango's underhanded marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
It turns out that was not an isolated incident. If you look at this article revision from April 2006 [wikipedia.org], you will see that they have been at it much more recently. I suspect that Zango is doing a full-out campaign on any "Web 2.0" website, any website that anyone can edit or contribute to. I would not be surprised if they had also been marketing on Digg---I think I have even seen them there, in fact!
The evidence for a lawsuit against their company for their destructive marketing practices is mounting...
Re:Zango's underhanded marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
Less than thirty minutes ago at the time of writing, Zango once again edited the Wikipedia article on Zango messenger. See this edit [wikipedia.org], which has been reverted by other users. They wrote in the edit summary, what Wikipedia asks its editors to write to justify edits and explain changes, "Fact checking and bias redirection."
The same IP address wrote on the article's discussion page, "29 June 2006, reworked the corporate advertising copy for accuracy. I hope you don't mind me having a little fun with these shills. If you object to my copy, please exchange it for your own, so long as it is not advertising and/or misinformation in Zango's favour. Thank you and good night. [Anonymous]"
They have just admitted to manipulating Wikipedia for corporate advertising. They think they are "anonymous," but this adware company knows not even the concept of IP addresses. I am opening a discussion with Wikipedia administrators at this URL [wikipedia.org] with the intention of getting all Zango IP addresses permanently blocked from Wikipedia. Please observe and provide input if you feel you have something useful to say.
as a myspace user (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:as a myspace user (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday March 31 2003, @01:23AM)
I was blogging on myspace on the PC. And it was all, like, beep beep beep beep, and MySpace was, like, gone.
And I was, like.... "Uunh?" (O_O)
Zongo DEVOURED MySpace.
It was a really good myspace.
And then I had to do it again, and I had to do it fast, so it wasn't as good (;_;)
It's kind of... a bummer.
My name is Ellen Feiss, and I MySpace...
Lies: How malware and politicians relate (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.freewebs.com/tubapro | Last Journal: Thursday May 31, @05:18PM)
What this is all about (Score:5, Informative)
This is where that mangled piece of English in the summary comes in. That piece is from an email where Zango reveals there evil scheme to the Zango pushing legions. In the email, Zango tells its associates to target kids and make it easy to embed Zango vids in their MySpace profiles. Then all their friends come, have the installer pop up, and let it through so they can see the cool new video.
There, just in case you were confused after trying to read only the summary like I was.
Is that NEWS for nerds? or STUFF THAT matters? (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Tuesday March 14 2006, @03:01PM)
Cuz it doesn't look like news for nerds OR stuff that matters.
In a related story... (Score:4, Funny)
WTF... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Celebrity? (Score:2)
(http://phorm.phormix.com/ | Last Journal: Monday May 19 2003, @12:08PM)
Maybe we could ask the MPAA about that, hmmmmm...
Let's be fair (Score:5, Funny)
But does it run on linux? (Score:2)
(http://www.codepunk.com/)
Seriously... (Score:1, Flamebait)
(http://rodness.blogspot.com/)
Re:Seriously... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://blog.greyskull.org/)
Decoded summary (Score:4, Informative)
As the user base of myspace is not that tech savvy, they click "yes" to the pop up that ask if they want the software installed (presented as required to see the video, or even automatic when the video try to load, i'm not sure) and they find themselves infected by the spyware.
It seems some emails proving that scheme have been found.
I RTFA yet.... (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.pornforthemind.com/)
Does anybody have a video (Score:2)
(http://www.houghi.org/)
Zango doesn't work on my machine (Score:1)
Please use Internet Explorer 5+ or Firefox on Windows to access this content.
flamebait? MY hate? (Score:1)
for the longest time nerds were outcasted when the net first started.
myspace is a way for the rest of the non-tech-savvy people to catch up.
when geocities.com first started in the mid-90's, every tech/geek/nerd/etc had a webpage that looked not as high quality but just and loud and annoying as the my space profiles these "teens" create.
the world has caught up, and now they are making webpages
todays myspace.com pages is like yesterdays geocities pages.....
myspace = animated hell
geocites = over use of the blink tag and who the fark though it would be cool to have lime green text over a bgimage that looks like a bad shirt from the 70's.
basically i am saying.. the rest of the world is adopting the internet. they arent as tech savvy so they use myspace because its easy... half of them just copy and paste code, dont tell me you havent done that ever. dont get me wrong i am not trying to say it is right to have a bad webpage/profile/blog/whatever, but i am saying it is a trend like neon hot pants in the 80's. its big bold and ugly, but give it time and people will realize that jerry curl(read: myspace profile) isnt cool anymore.