A Gator By Any Other Name

MFS! writes "CNet reports that Gator, everyone's favorite ad software, is changing its name to Claria. Gator's CEO says "We feel that the Claria Corporation name will allow us to better communicate the expanding breadth of offerings that we provide to consumers and advertisers." He fails to mention what "Claria" is supposed to mean or how it accomplishes this goal, but it seems that the name change may be no more than an attempt to distance the company from a moniker which has become involved in allegations of spyware."

Claria is spyware!!!

[night_flyer]

I hope slashdot doesn't get forced to remove [slashdot.org] this now...

Re:The real question is:

[Davak]

Quote from their page...

Claria Offers Multiple GAIN Network Ad Vehicles To Meet Your Campaign Objectives:

Instant Message Sliders
Instant Message Pop Ups
Pop Unders
Tag-A-Long Sliders
Flash and Rich Media


Okay, they attack using instant messaging, sliders, and pop under windows.

Spyware or not--this guys are using advertising methods that they are evil.

Re:Minor correction...

[Davak]

Wanna see what evil will be appearing on your network soon? Source: Claria [claria.com]

Date-Manager [date-manager.com]
Gator E-Wallet [gator.com]
Weatherscope [weatherscope.com]
www.precision-time [precision-time.com]
gainpublishing [gainpublishing.com]
Searchscout [searchscout.com]

I know I've seen several of these installed already on our systems at work.

Once spyware, always spyware.

Tyres

[Gordonjcp]

Don't forget, though, that there really wasn't anything wrong with the Firestone tyres. Ford stupidly told customers to run at absurdly low pressures to improve the stability of a badly-designed vehicle, and since the tyres were being used out of spec, they failed. Everyone knows blowouts are caused by running on soft tyres (or they should).

I run Firestone tyres on one of my Citroens, because they are the closest to the proper Michelin X tyres (which aren't made in 145SR15 any more). Never had a problem with them.

Re:Gator is evil

[Anonymous Coward]

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 ads.osdn.com
127.0.0.1 claria.com
127.0.0.1 gator.com

nuff said.

- Moomin

Not spyware!

[anaphora]

Remember guys, Gator is not spyware [slashdot.org]. It's adware. Please refrain from using the former term.

Re:Gator is evil

[anakin357]

I work at a rather large ISP, and strangely enough, when there is obvious adware installed, when I tell them it's downloading advertisements and such, they actually beleive the ads are coming from websites they visit (sometimes ours).

I actually had someone the other day accuse our homepage of popping up pornographic advertisements. The very first thing out of my mouth was, "Have you installed KaZaa?"

He reluctantly agreed, and said "Oh, so it's KaZaa?"

"Yep, you need to get rid of that junk"...

Here's my point: People are stupid. Changing their name once every couple years lets them stay ahead of the curve, because remember, Chrismas is coming, and we'll have another ~5-10 million (guessing here) computer users on the internet. When a screen pops up saying would you like to syncronize your time, keep a calendar, be able to see the current weather conditions, etc etc, they think: "Well wouldn't that be cool?"

The answer is no.

Re:Gator is evil

[dytin]

Not to be to nit-picky, but that should be Ad-Aware, not ad-ware, which is what gator's eWallet is.

Domains to block...

[jefftp]

Here's a list of Claria's domains where downloads are available:

gator.com
claria.com
searchscout.com
precisio n-time.com
weatherscope.com
date-manager.com

If you're running a web caching system, block on those domains and your users are protected from unnecessary help desk calls.

Re:Just like Palladium

[Anonymous Coward]

Just FYI, Palladium changed its name because there's a firewall product of the same name, the writers of which were understandably upset when websites like www.stoppalladium.com started popping up

Re:Gator is evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this would be better, since your browser doesn't have to contact your machine (or anything) each time the server is requested.

127.0.0.1 localhost
0.0.0.0 ads.osdn.com
0.0.0.0 claria.com
0.0.0.0 gator.com

Re:Gator is evil

[jafuser]

Actually this would be better, since your browser doesn't have to contact your machine (or anything) each time the server is requested.

127.0.0.1 localhost
0.0.0.0 ads.osdn.com
0.0.0.0 claria.com
0.0.0.0 gator.com

I'm replying to this with full quotation, as the AC may not be noticed at Score 0, yet I'd like to see someone address why this is rarely recommended in place of 127.0.0.1.

I've been using 0.0.0.0 for blocking hosts for a long while. It seems to result in faster page loads since the pending images don't hang the browser up. This is useful especially on websites where the text is not yet rendered in wait of size information for the pending images.