Is Yahoo Actively Supporting Adware? 176
conq writes "According to BusinessWeek, a report said Yahoo was actively supporting the companies that spawn pop-up ads. In early September, Yahoo engineer Jeremy D. Zawodny sounded off on his blog: "Do I like those [software installation] practices? Hell no. It's insulting and disrespectful.""
update the story submission takes Jeremy out of context which he
blogs about and says mean things about us.
Yahoo has been like this for some time (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news Jeremy D. Zawodny fired (Score:3, Insightful)
What popups (Score:2, Insightful)
I use Mozilla and selected privacy options.
Re:It's True! (Score:2, Insightful)
They are here to make money (Score:1, Insightful)
Trust Yahoo? (Score:5, Insightful)
What Rosenzweig fails to mention is that Yahoo, like most companies, will take advantage of that trust to the furthest extent they can get away with.
Trust us because we say our foundation is trust? I don't think so.
How about "Trust us because we take steps to prevent adware, not support it."
Or, "Trust us because we will never piggyback software and settings changes onto downloads from us that you choose to install."
Or, "Trust us because it's not in our financial interest to do bad things to you."
Unfortunately, none of these three possibilities are true... and until they are, I will not trust Yahoo farther than I can throw them.
Yahoo's Reputation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What popups (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no good reason to put up with those popups.
Re:Of course they are (Score:2, Insightful)
They have nothing to tangible sell. The only way for them to make money is to sell data they've garnered and they users who they garnered it from.
Just to point out, you're treading on very thin ice there lad. There is a very popular search engine company who sell some search appliances but whose major revenue stream comes from the sale of targeted advertisements. Targeted? How?
Every time you visit one of this company's pages, you'll get a unique cookie (if you haven't already got one), that won't expire until 2038, and your search terms are logged with datestamp, IP address, User-Agent and, of course, your identification number from that unique, immortal cookie. Not even the CIA could get away with this. [google-watch.org]
Now look, people tell search engines things that they wouldn't tell their closest friends and relatives. This is a hostile invasion of privacy - or, at least, will become one.
This is precisely the same information that, as you say, Yahoo! garners from its users to sell for profit. Not to say you failed to see the similarity, it's just that people seem to love this company and won't hold it to the same standards that they would expect of others. Classic hypocrisy.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising (Score:2, Insightful)
you're a fucking hypocrite (Score:4, Insightful)
I really, really doubt the police in China told Yahoo what the investigation was about; you know, police are like that. They just demand information, and the law compels you to obey.
Perhaps we should have a trade embargo against China? That is, logically, the only way to go following your logic. If you operate in China, you have to follow the law. If you don't follow the law, you can't operate in China. The law, in your opinion(and mine too, certainly), violates the peoples' civil rights.
So, how about we stop all trade with China. Seems to be working just wonderfully for the people in Cuba...
Look, Yahoo isn't personally accountable for the actions of the Chinese government. The authorities demanded information and Yahoo obeyed the law. Did they even know what the investigation was about? It's not like the executives at Yahoo said, "No let's see. Who's civil rights can we violate today?" Give us a fucking break.
This is a political matter that deserves attention. When we have some politicians that aren't mouth breathing shit eaters, maybe it can be properly addressed. And perhaps when we damand the same of ourselves that we demand of others, we won't look like fucking hypocrites.
Re:Don't see a reason? (Score:3, Insightful)
To be fair, that textile industry had no textile workers. The fabric was 'spun' by marketers.
Re:Jeremys post in question.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem is even if the Yahoo execs aren't "evil", they have no good way out. If publicly-held company A is making money by taking over users' computers, company B's shareholders will want to know why company B isn't doing the same thing. And if company B's execs say they don't want to do it on something as flimsy as moral grounds, then company B's shareholders will fire said execs and replace them with robot drones.
Publicy-held corporations have a single motivation: profit. Anything you see such a company do, regardless of how "good" or "bad" it appears, was done to make the shareholders more money. If Yahoo's execs refused to submit their users to pop-ups and flash ads and such, they could very well be removed from the company.
Fucked up, huh?