Posted on 08/30/2007 3:15:21 PM PDT by ShadowAce
For many years, we've written some highly critical reports about Spyware vendors, some of whom would then e-mail us asking us to stop referring to their product as Spyware. Claria Corporation was perhaps the worst offender in this regard, threatening to sue anyone (AV Vendors or the press) who called their Gator spyware what it actually was.
It has all been part of a massive attempt by the spyware industry to hoist some kind of pseudo-legitimacy on a sector that spent almost a decade trampling user rights and privacy. As part of this push, Zango (formerly 180Solutions) recently sued Kaspersky over using the Spyware tag, but a court has dismissed the lawsuit:
"In the latest ruling on one of these cases (in which Zango sued Kaspersky), the ruling makes it clear we already have such a law on the books. The judge dismissed the lawsuit, noting that security firms have every right to label software as they see fit, citing part of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act."Specifically, the court ruled that AV companies are protected under statute 47 USC 230(c)(2), which defines the AV vendor as an interactive computer service provider and immune to such semantic lawsuits by the spy-infectious-disease-spew-ware industry.
If I recall, I had that stinking Zango virus on a machine I owned. It was ungodly the efforts I had to go through to get rid of that crummy thing. “Spyware” is being too kind. These people should be taken out and lynched.
I left Windows well before spyware became the problem it is today. While I understand the immensity of this, I’ve never had to deal with it on a personal level.
47 USC 230(c)(2), which defines the AV vendor as an interactive computer service provider and immune to such semantic lawsuits by the spy-infectious-disease-spew-ware industry.
bump
Oh, and BTW.....this one is a kick in the seat of the democrat pants, LOL
The Congress finds the following:
(3) The Internet and other interactive computer services offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.
I believe the proper citation for this is:
47 USC 230 (a) (3)
Spammers and spyware creators should be branded all over with American flags and Stars of David, then dropped into downtown Mecca.
Spybot flags the cookies it generates.
I had that one on my laptop. Could not get rid of it no matter what I did. Downloaded a removal tool and it would appear to be gone but would reinstall when I rebooted?
That company (Zango) should be sued!
BonziBuddy is Deeply Saddened.
BUMP!
LOL!
Beee-yoooo-teee-ful
I’m the guy everyone calls to fix their computer. Many times I’ve wanted to kick Bonzi in the balls, but alas, he seems to have none.
There are a few good reasons why a product may be deliberately made difficult to detect or remove. The owner of a computer may want to run software the users might not want, and he might want the software to be protected from those users. A piece of software that's required for some other piece of software to operate may reasonably include some measures to prevent accidental removal, though it allow an informed user to remove it and accept the consequences.
In general, though, a lot of the junk out there is very deliberately designed to infest the machines of people who either want it gone, or would want it gone if they knew of its existence. While I wouldn't want to throw somebody in jail because the "uninstaller" they wrote for their shareware application didn't clean up absolutely everything, I would see no problem with criminal laws that applied in cases of demonstrable intent.
Absolutely. Lots of spyware has functionality that many people might find useful; it’s the hook they use to get people to install it.
I’ve never had anything but grief with Real Media products. They are incredible resource hogs, buggy and crash-prone, and they do ‘’phone home’’ without asking or even telling you.
One of these days I'll get off of win 98.
Groan. I'm looking at a package I'd really love to try out (one-time use, unless it's really great) but... it runs on Windows and I'm not up on Win2K administration, whether I could create a temporary user with privileges such that an install by that user would remain contained. I suspect the answer is no.
And I don't have a machine sitting around to use it, isolated. (I don't like dual-boots.)
I have it now - in fact, one of the popunders just popped as I clicked “hit reply” - and will pop again when I hit “Preview” and again when click “Post.” It has been going on for 2 months now, ever since I clicked on a professional wrestling magazine link here on FR when the Benoit deaths occurred.
Popups just started happening and going on, ad infinitum, until I had to shut down and reboot. When I did, I saw that the “thing” had destroyed my SpySweeper program and fragmented some of its files - had to uninstall it.
I hadn’t laid eyes on a popup or popunder of any kind in years and years. I’m very careful about my surfing and don’t even use my email any more.
This has been infuriating, as I (used to) do a lot of research online. I’m homebound, sick, broke, without a car, and have no help at all to get anything fixed. I’ve installed a couple of different *free* AV and anti-spyware programs, which have kept new Trojans and such at a minimum, but this awful Zango/Zedo virus continues to disrupt every single move I make online and flies under the AVG radar.
The odd thing is that it stopped “popping” for about 10 days, as long as I never turned off the puter. Then we had a power outage 3 days ago and when I turned it back on, it was back wreaking havoc on my online life.
I’ve been through all the remedies, so don’t really need any advice on it, and no more flaming about my complaining about it, please - I hope to be getting another computer soon, a spare one belonging to a kind FReeper.
Just had to vent about this mind-numbingly irritating “thing.” Why any company would intentionally produce these aggravating ads is beyond me. I’ve kept a list of the sleazeball companies (and some not so sleazeball) that are part of this torture.
The main thing I’ve noticed is that a cookie for “urchin - google-analytics” is always deposited a few seconds before the barrage starts. And it somehow has a way of doing so out of chronological order, always staying one cookie behind the FR one, no matter what time it was actually put on.
Wish I could bill them for all my wasted time, at my old hourly professional rate from before I got sick! I despise these companies!
I’ve had some nasty ones. If I ever found one of the subhuman scum who write them I would make them beg for death.
In the past year we went from nearly all win98 (I forget how many) to two win98, one Win2K (house server), one XP (a gift), and Kubuntu Linux 7.04.
VERY happy with the latter. I did have to replace a winprinter somewhat poorly supported in 6.06 and not at all in 7.04 with an old HP DeskJet 660c that was down in the garage, but HP is apparently supporting the (K)Ubuntu printer drivers, and it all works very well -- including my nVidia card and 1440x900 LCD monitor.
Me either, 3 clicks in IE to turn off "third party cookies" usually does the trick. For those going to porn or illegal software sites, no browser or operating system is safe.
This is kind of a roundabout and time consuming process if you never used it again, but the sacrifice is all one time up front, and I think you'll find yourself using it all the time.
Actually, there may be a silver lining to this. You mentioned that a "kind FReeper" had given you a used machine. I suspect there are many other FReepers who have spare computers lying around gathering dust (at one time, I had three). I also suspect that there are numerous FReepers who don't have the resources to buy a new machine and who would benefit from a hardware upgrade. It might be a good idea to start an occasional thread -- maybe even a permanent one -- to get these machines into the hands of folks who could use them.
I can contact Jim and see if he'd be okay with it, but I don't think it would be a problem.
Hey, that might be a good idea. This machine I have now was given to me when a computer repair shop near me just went out of business while working on my own puter - putting in a new modem for me on my Win98 (I wouldn’t ever change, lol) for which modems were hard to come by at that late date.
This one I’m on was the loaner and they just told me to keep it. The bad news was that they hadn’t finished my “real” puter and I’ve never even tried to boot it up, since they told me that. (I don’t think it has a modem in it - I think they lied to me about getting one.)
It has been a good puter, but had been someone’s work puter and doesn’t have a sound card and won’t load a media player for some reason. It’s XP Pro and has some network admin controls that I don’t know anything about. I’ve learned to live without a whole lot of things in my poverty, but I sure do miss music and video on my computer - so will be glad when I get them again.
I do hope an “exchange” could be worked out here on FR to help others. The kind FReepers on one chat thread where I’m a regular had thrown in to help me out - wanted to send me a rent-a-geek, but I’m not really able to even do that. I think they surprised themselves with just the resources available among just a few of them.
Best FReegards with the idea!!
Have VMware, so maybe I could do that.
Gator is the devil! Still not nearly as bad as the “spam blocker utility”(I forgot the name of this one, I had to remote into work to a computer that seems to always have it to find the name), Weather Bug, or Hotbar.
I’ll check into it.
It's not, however it installs a bunch of stuff that is... You're much better off getting rid of it and replacing it with "Real Alternative," which you can get in the K-Lite Codec Mega Pack.
Mark
If you had Win ME or Win XP, it was the operating system that reinstalled it. If you're ever in a similar situation, you need to turn off the "System Restore" feature before running the anti-spyware or anti-virus and then rebooting. Once it's really gone, then turn the system restore back on again.
Mark
Mark
I got rid of Real Player, it seemed to infest itself in other things and my Windows Media Player wouldn’t work right while I had ‘Real’ installed.
Right now I am fighting StatCounter and TagASarous. Spybot finds it and ‘gets rid’ of it but it regenerates. I need to find a program to get rid of it.
Good deal - hope it works out.
FWIW, in trying to fix mine, it boiled down to a couple of things that I couldn’t do with my very low level of computer non-savvy.
I knew the moment I got it, so narrowed it down to 3 new files - one “exe” and two “dll”. I knew not to just delete them, as there would be traces left, but didn’t know how to track those. I also tried system restoring back to the day before that, but that didn’t work very well - just stopped a little of it.
The three had some kind of signature “SKY003” in place of the mfr name. I put the filenames into google, which was a nightmare in itself, but found others who had had the same virus.
It came down to a spoof of the svchost file - and how there’s no way for someone like me to know which was the spoof and which ones were real (I had 5). That was when I gave up. I didn’t understand the questions it asked of me when needing to make Y/N decisions.
(The reason googling was, and still is, a nightmare is that this Zango/Zedo thing takes whatever search terms I put into the google search box and plants them into a search page on either eBay or amazon, then wipes out my screen by opening the results page full-screen. I can eventually close it down by clicking the URH corner, but it’s such a headache and google is my basic start page for everything.)
I’ve had 4 popunders just while writing this - and that’s with a firewall and popup blocker resident, ugh!
.
I’m not going to say a word here
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s better if you just hit your F key 5 times and keep quiet!
And THAT would be hard to do!!
.
I though I heard a strange buzzing noise
But it was something outside
Lol, you were probably snoring and it woke you up!!
.
Big rigs lined up
At this time of night
Our tax dollars at work
Our city doesn’t do work like that at night so it must be an urgent thing.
Since going to Linux my Spam is maybe 1 a week and that comes from a different Email account, (I have several).
The spy-ware is simply not found on my PC, and Virus don’t infect my.
I know go ahead and flame away, you can either complain about the problem or get rid of it. I chose to get rid of it.
Software that can't be removed is absolutely, definitively malware (virus/worm/trojan/spyware/adware). No legitimate application behaves that way. (Microsoft's Internet Explorer comes to mind, but I can't really call that malware.)
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