FTC Fines Zango $3 Million

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."

There must be a lot of money in malware.

If these guys can pay a fine that size and still be in business, one has to wonder just how much loot they rake in with their wonderful little surprises.

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Wow, yeah, never thought of that before. I wonder where it comes from, 'cause I wouldn't imagine that there would be that many people actually clicking on stuff in their popups... Any ideas?

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I'm not sure of how it works, exactly, but they make most of their money from hi-jacking affiliate sales.

For instance, if they have a popup that redirects you to a specific URL at Amazon.com, then for the next 45 or 90 days anything you buy at Amazon.com g

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For instance, if they have a popup that redirects you to a specific URL at Amazon.com, then for the next 45 or 90 days anything you buy at Amazon.com gets credited to them as an affiliate, even if you go directly to their site.

I don't think that's correc

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Paradise Pete wrote:

But of course maybe I made a mistake in constructing the link.

Your mistake was not hijacking their browser to re-insert your referral whenever they go to any of your sites.

~Rebecca

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Well, that could be for 2 reasons:

1. Amazon may have stopped the 45 day thing as part of their fraud prevention. 45 - 90 days is still very common (if not the standard) for affiliate payouts. I couldn't find it mentioned on their site.

2. The person th

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Well, if that's true then I'm thinking I have to get into the browser hijacking business! Anyone know a security flaw in Firefox that will let me do that ;)

Seriously though, if Amazon, for instance, stopped allowing referrals over the holiday season (now

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Nah, the whole viral / referral marketing thing works because it is upfront. Companies that try to force it end up failing.

I think Google has succeeded because they haven't done anything seedy or contrived. They have tried to be very fair with AdSense an

It's not enough

It's not enough. It's not nearly enough!

Kind of torn

I have to say I'm kind of torn on the issue of spyware. It's a terrible practice and causes serious problems with people's computers every day.

At the same time, I've made my fair share of money cleaning it off PC's. :)

Seriously, it's about time that

Re:Kind of torn - hard to sue

People who suffer actual damages from these programs should start bringing lawsuits against them.

The problems here are:

1: It's hard to prove actual damages.
2: It's hard to identify the company to sue.
3: It's hard sue a company in small claims court t

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6: It's hard to collect, even if you win!

Yeah, I'd like to be a mouse in the corner when the FTC tries to collect. The FTC needs the authority to add another mill a day for every day they drag their feet writing the check IMNSHO. Or the legal ability to

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Advertisers know exactly what is going on with their dollars when they hire a company to distribute their ads, etc. The way to clear this up is to allow people to sue the advertisers. That'll stop it quickly. I remember, there's some site that has a wal

Uh huh, right.

Zango's executives pointed a finger elsewhere, claiming that the federal violations were due to third-party distributors

Yeah. And Pfizer isn't responsible for the spam sent by the third party distributors that they turn a blind eye to, and that they "don't

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I suggest you use Google®-brand search to check your claims in future, because Pfizer has sued people sending out Viagra spam.

Consder the following...

Consider the following in assessing their guilt:

tried to prevent them from uninstalling it.

If they were innocent they would make an easy and safe removal tool as widely available as possible. And this tool should block any further attempts to reinstall the software as part of the removal process. Also...

'Zango's executives pointed a finger elsewhere, claiming that the federal violations were due to third-party distributors rather than the software manufacturer itself.

Oh, isn't that clever. Point the finger. Not our fault. Get a clue stick folks. Nobody works to sneak software onto a user's system that they're not getting paid for doing. If Zango were to actually stop paying for any further installs by anyone this problem would quickly go away. In addition, the software certainly has to contact Zango servers for updates and ads to display. Have your servers refuse to accept connections from any previous versions of your software, rendering it effectively toothless before you give me your poor me tales of woe.

Better yet, use your software to advertise the removal tool referenced above to all current users.

And Dear FCC, go after the advertisers who have used Zango to flog their wares. A few hundred thousand in fines here, and a few hundred thousand there, and the message will get out while you're reducing the government deficit in the process.

The plain truth is, there are some business models that DO NOT DESERVE to survive.

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The uninstaller should prevent another installation of the software? Just playing devil's advocate here, but that's a much higher standard you are setting them up against than just about any other software.

For one thing, what if this was Firefox. Should

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leave a text file called, "ZANGO_DONOT_INSTALL.txt"

The point is, to make the installer detect if its to not install again.

Why? Because it NEVER ASKS to install, it does it magically, where as firefox is a
manual install, not a sly install.

Any way, send thos

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... there are some business models that DO NOT DESERVE to survive.....

In America. Once they are no longer based in the US we (for the most part) can't touch them. Fining them doesn't really solve the problem... just makes it go elsewhere. Still, as lon

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Ok while I'm not usually one to complain about the form of the message your excessive use of the bold tag is more than a little annoying. When you emphasize every other statement in your document the emphasis kind of loses it's meaning.

Seriously man, jus

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>And Dear FCC, go after the advertisers who have used Zango to flog their wares. A few hundred thousand in fines here, and a few hundred thousand there, and the message will get out while you're reducing the government deficit in the process.

Oh that wou

don't they deserve it?

i say, people who aren't smart enough to not install those "free screen savers" and "blackjack casino" games deserve to have their computers thrashed by ad ware. maybe they'll learn the lesson when 100 pop-ups launch every time they click on the blue "e" t

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the "they deserve it" train of thought sucks, because while they *might* indeed deserve it, they're also likely made part of a botnet that then goes performing DoS attacks, spamming and scanning for exploits. Ultimately they just screw the net up for every

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Yeah sure, they deserve it. Anyone that thinks that they might be able to download something cool from the Internet for free *deserves* to have their machine maliciously invaded and "thrashed". That's what they get for believing something that is offered

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Maybe people should just need a license to use the Internet

the problem isn't the phishing websites. it's the stupid/old/'technophobic' people. those who can't safely use the technology, they shouldn't be allowed to. but of course we're not to allow/disa

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That's a pretty strong comparison to say that an old person getting swindled by another person who is directly trying to deceive them is the same thing as an old person not knowing/acknowledging their physical limitations and getting into an accident. I j

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I don't understand how people getting scammed in some way through the Internet is somehow so different from a telephone or a face-to-face meeting.

i'll tell you the difference. in real life, if i'd go to a ghetto neighborhood and start talking to the "wro

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I {heart} analogies!

If you walk down a dark alley at night and someone cuts your throat... you may be stupid, but that doesn't mean the throat-cutter gets a pass. You are stupid.. you are dead = good. Throat-cutter is mean.. throat-cutter is punished = g

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Yeah sure, they deserve it. Anyone that thinks that they might be able to download something cool from the Internet for free *deserves* to have their machine maliciously invaded and "thrashed". That's what they get for believing something that is offered

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People shouldn't trust free things in the regular world. Why would it magically be safer on the internet?

Taking something that isn't yours is wrong in the regular world, but if you believe the posts on Slashdot, doing it on the Internet is moral and just.

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Taking something that isn't yours is wrong in the regular world, but if you believe the posts on Slashdot, doing it on the Internet is moral and just. Apparently there is some sort of magic dichotomy in effect.

I wasn't talking about stealing. I meant

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"People shouldn't trust free things in the regular world. Why would it magically be safer on the internet?"

Last time I checked, linux was free - and so was pretty much everything in the open-source community.

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Yeah, I probably should have said "People shouldn't automatically trust ..."

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People shouldn't trust free things in the regular world. Why would it magically be safer on the internet?

There are plenty of pieces of free software you can get online; why should someone with limited experience in distinguishing the good ones from the

Zango and friends ruined freeware

Actually no. I remember a time long ago when there was tons of free software out there you could trust. I'm not talking about the open-source stuff (which I generally still trust when it's from SF.net or freshmeat), but demos, freeware utilities, shareware

The FTC is a good start, but it should be the DOJ

Just fining these guys isn't going to make the problem go away. Unfortunately, I heard somewhere that the FTC doesn't have the power to shut down shit like this, you need the Department of Justice to do that. The only good thing about the FTC ruling is th

Re:The FTC is a good start, but it should be the D

I hope the DOJ attacks from here but I wish the FTC had fined them at least $50 million. If the fines get big enough crapware will get strangled.

TANSTAAFL

Speaking in general, without reference to any specific individual or corporation, I'll add these comments about the adware/spyware industry:

1. The reason adware companies do everything they can to make it difficult to remove their software is because they'

$3 Million Dollars?

I wonder what using the dollar unit twice means in your title? Maybe it's the standard method to denote inflation?

Oh, ZANGO.

I was worried for a minute. I misread it as Zombo [zombo.com] Thank God my favorite intarweb site won't be going anywhere.

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what the hell is zombo.com is all about? some stupid voice repeating that 'anything is possible'..? then they ask me to sign up for a newsletter

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I was gonna explain it, but, fuck it. Nobody tell him.

Fight it bottom-up.

What you have to do is applying recursive fines. Those guys enjoy using lots of "sub-contractors" to "share responsibility" for the inherently evil actions. Instead of applying a fine of 3 millions on the 1st guy in the chain, they should apply similar f

George W should...

Why not just have George W just make a law/royal decree that all adware and spyware makers are terrorists! Then he could just imprision them without any due process, and take all their property. This problem of spyware and adware could be cleared up (Fro

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1.) Zango paid for every installation, voluntary or not
2.) The software installed is almost impossible to remove. Believe me, I've tried.

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Add/Remove programs doesn't work on the 180Solutions software. It'd be nice if it did, but in some cases it pretends to do something (while in reality doing nothing), in other cases it tells you to go to a web site to get the removal software (which you ei

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Malware != regulare software. It doesn't have an uninstaller and due to security problems with IE and Windows installs itself--so it's not really a choice of the user (other than not using IE and Windows of course--hence why I haven't had to deal with this

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What difference does it make who caused it to install automatically - it does. And can't be removed. When calculating user responsibility it doesn't matter why these things are true.

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If you don't like their uninstaller don't install it? Are you crazy? This stuff gets installed illegally most of the time. I own a small business and I clean this stuff all the time. The 180 solutions and Zango is some of the worst violators and some o

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Ya know, this is one of those cases where intent matters quite a bit, as does notice.

If a developer makes software which is intentionally difficult to uninstall and fails to effectively notify potential users of this property, there are arguably elements