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Zango Caught in Lies About MySpace? 81

Posted by Zonk 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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Zango Caught in Lies About MySpace? More

Zango Caught in Lies About MySpace?

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  • I for one... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Friday July 28, 2006 @05:51PM (#15802759)
    ...am glad I have absolutely no idea what that summary means.

  • Tonight? Um, I'm busy.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Itninja ( 937614 ) on Friday July 28, 2006 @05:57PM (#15802795) Homepage
    One of the lines from the 'full text' of the original email:
    If I were you I'd do them tonight
    Good thing he's not me.

  • Braindead marketing practices (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28, 2006 @05:58PM (#15802797)

    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?

  • Fer Shame... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Friday July 28, 2006 @06:04PM (#15802817) Homepage Journal

    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)

      by Kesch ( 943326 ) on Friday July 28, 2006 @06:07PM (#15802829)
      Profiles named Zango were found on MySpace and Zango later admitted an employee created the profiles and said it was a "mistake".

      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.
      • 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 heard there are places in San Fansisco where people get together to do just that. And then they send each other infected emails for kicks.

        It's just sick.
    • Caught in a web 2.0 of their own lies, like common politicians.

      there, fixed.

  • I dunno... (Score:1, Funny)

    by TemplesA ( 984100 )
    Something about my MySpace and 5 dollars and crappy embedded videos...

    I'm out.

  • Zango's underhanded marketing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 9x320 ( 987156 ) on Friday July 28, 2006 @06:11PM (#15802852)
    This isn't the first time I've seen them engage in this. I first encountered Zango when its predecessor company, 180 Solutions, told me to install Install026.exe, which had 180 Search Solutions infect my computer with its spyware. I had been installing a video game at the time, while browsing the webcomic hosting site Keenspot, so I thought it was part of the installation process and clicked the button. My computer fell to the spyware and I had to end up doing a system restore. Since then 180 Solutions has merged with another spyware company to become Zango.

    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.
    • As an extension to my previous post, I should add that, with this MySpace incident, there is obviously no "accident" undergoing at Zango. Obviously there should be some provision of law floating about making them vulnerable to some sort of law suit for these marketing tactics. Someone should find it and sue, perhaps?

      • Re:Zango's underhanded marketing (Score:5, Interesting)

        by 9x320 ( 987156 ) on Friday July 28, 2006 @06:29PM (#15802931)
        Oh, my, I'm sorry if it looks like I'm karma whoring, but this post is much more urgent. The last post about Zango mentioned that they had created a Zango Messenger article in Wikipedia in 2005, which has since been fixed by Wikipedia administrators.

        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...
        • Wow, "Zango is adware, but it has been said that it is a rootkit" to "Zango is a product designed to do for the Internet what commercial TV stations like NBC, CBS and ABC have done for TV, which is keep it free."

          That's somewhat of a shift. Glad to see a company come around and drop their spyware so quickly. ;-)

        • Re:Zango's underhanded marketing (Score:5, Interesting)

          by 9x320 ( 987156 ) on Friday July 28, 2006 @07:18PM (#15803117)
          More developments:

          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.
          • Er... read that comment a bit more closely. It was left by someone not from the company who added some sarcasm to the advertisement text left by the company. How could you honestly confuse that?
            • I had left the comment. The person that wrote it had reverted a perfectly good article back to the Zango-written version just to add some comment to the bottom. It's still harmful, and got the person that did it blocked for three hours, but I'm pretty sure that the person at the computer won't even notice it.
              • Here's the edit, with non-Zango additions bolded:

                Zango Messenger is a straightforward universal instant messaging (IM) application that lets you communicate with anyone using AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger - from one simple interface, but has the added side-effect of installing insidious spyware clients that clog up systems and keep you from actually enjoying your PC. However, this can be counteracted by using such programs as Spybot Search & Destroy and Lavasoft's AdAware.

                Zango Mess

    • The last time, incidentally, was when I was searching Wikipedia. I came across this revision of a Wikipedia article on Zango Messenger, a spyware laden IM service made by Zango.

      And I remeber reading something as that IM being a Miranda IM clone, with the copyrights removed.

      It might be me but I haven't figured HOW does the URL tag work yet ;(

      • Like this: slashdot.org [slashdot.org]

        What I typed looks like <URL:slashdot.org>

        Is that what you were wanting to know? As far as how slashcode actually handles the url tag, I have no idea, other than the input and the end result. It could very well have a hammer that hits a monkey on the head everytime you use a URL tag, and then the monkey writes out the URL on the back of a receipt, and mails it to Mars, where the top secret Chinese Mars base receives it, translates it into a string of digits in base 3 repr

    • It's hosted by Time Warner Telecom, by the way. That's another reason not to use AOL.

      Not too surprising since recently Time Warner's site for kids has been pushing Zango spyware on them [donotreply.com].

  • as a myspace user (Score:1, Insightful)

    by nude-fox ( 981081 )
    i still have no idea what the hell your talking about

  • Lies: How malware and politicians relate (Score:4, Funny)

    by tubapro12 ( 896596 ) on Friday July 28, 2006 @06:16PM (#15802869) Journal
    Lies, lies, and more lies. They've turned the internet into a US presidential election.

  • What this is all about (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kesch ( 943326 ) on Friday July 28, 2006 @06:16PM (#15802872)
    So apparently Zango makes some crappy adware toolbars. Then they get video's to link back to the Zango website and bring up installers when they try to play. Webmasters can sign up and push Zango crapware in return for $$$s per install.

    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.

  • Cuz it doesn't look like news for nerds OR stuff that matters.

    • it is stuff that matters to the new nerds.

      heh, sounds like a band name - "The New Nerds" with there new hit, "Rock the Distro".

  • In a related story... (Score:4, Funny)

    by HAKdragon ( 193605 ) <hakdragon@@@gmail...com> on Friday July 28, 2006 @06:19PM (#15802886)
    MySpace told Live Journal to tell Zango that they are no longer invited to their party and that Zango doesn't have a boyfriend because she's a heffer.

  • WTF... (Score:5, Funny)

    by shawnce ( 146129 ) on Friday July 28, 2006 @06:20PM (#15802889) Homepage
    Anyone have a decoder ring that works for this submission? I think mine is busted.

    • Re:WTF... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Peyna ( 14792 )
      Would it kill the editors to provide some context for those of us who haven't been in high school in quite some time?
  • Hmmm, I notice that they have a 'family guy' banner amongst a few others. Were they granted the rights to use that character, or are they perhaps in violation?

    Maybe we could ask the MPAA about that, hmmmmm...

  • Let's be fair (Score:5, Funny)

    by Joebert ( 946227 ) on Friday July 28, 2006 @06:41PM (#15802981) Homepage
    I think it's only fair that since they give you a place on their systems & let you call it "myspace", that they get to take some space on your system & call it their space.
  • Just another normal day in the windows landscape....feel the pain

  • Seriously... (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Rodness ( 168429 )
    Who the fuck cares about MySpace? (Aside from teenagers, obviously... but they're dumb.)

    • Re:Seriously... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Miniluv ( 165290 ) on Friday July 28, 2006 @07:39PM (#15803204) Homepage
      Sadly no. MySpace seems to have achieved critical mass, and I know a disturbing number of otherwise reasonable adults who've become hooked. It combines everything they want: a profile, pictures, messaging, hooking up with people they haven't seen in years, and horny teenage girls.
      • I agree. the Mayspace population has matured a lot over the last few months. The average age of users is around 25 now. I have 36 friends, and I know them all, and they all have bachelors or masters degrees. It is a great tool for meeting old friends and making new ones in your town. I am sure some of the uber nerds on here are just upset that non-nerds are actually using and enjoying the web. Besides most of them don't have the social skils to make new friends online or in real life, so myspace isn't of
        • Yeah, while I personally don't use myspace nor do I envision myself doing so (I lost touch with those friends on purpose!) I have no issues with it. And I do think its bringing up peoples level of comfort with a collaborative, interactive web. Livejournal started the ball rolling, and myspace is the next generation.

          Of course, the nerds bitched and moaned about LJ too as I recall.
    • Who the fuck cares about MySpace? (Aside from teenagers, obviously... but they're dumb.)

      Advertisers care. Teenagers dominate Western culture. They have throwaway income and they're easily manipulated. MySpace is basically a huge marketing list-- complete with interests and links to their friends-- of a good percentage of the teens in the U.S. and the world. You wonder why it's worth so much to Murdoch?

      This doesn't have much to do with you, or me really, but MySpace is hardly irrelevant. Right now it's

  • Decoded summary (Score:4, Informative)

    by Frenchy_2001 ( 659163 ) on Friday July 28, 2006 @07:01PM (#15803058)
    A spyware company called Zango (formerly 180 solution) has been caught trying to infect user's PCs through an automatic download triggered by a video. Their latest scheme is to post and encourage to post those videos on myspace pages.

    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)

    by ShawnDoc ( 572959 ) on Friday July 28, 2006 @07:40PM (#15803208) Homepage
    I still have no idea what the heck Zango is.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I tried to play a video on my laptop with linux, and Mozilla gave a popup that said:

              Please use Internet Explorer 5+ or Firefox on Windows to access this content.

  • okay okay......
    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 .... with limited knowledge.
    todays myspace.com pages is like yesterdays geocities pages.....

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