180Solutions Doesn't Consider Botnets Rogue Distributors?

from the apparently-not dept

Fri, May 26th 2006 2:24am — Mike Masnick

We've covered adware firm 180Solutions plenty of times in the past. While the company keeps claiming that all of the bad installs were due to "rogue distributors" and their latest technology would rid them of the problem, it seems that security researchers keep finding all sorts of nasty affiliates getting through. The latest, submitted by someone who prefers to remain anonymous, is that a botnet scam is installing 180Solutions' Zango software. It seems that we keep hearing stories like this, which raise plenty of questions concerning just how cleaned up 180Solutions' affiliate program is. As most people have recognized all along, the company really doesn't have much incentive to kill the rogue distributors, because it seems unlikely they could find enough people who actually want to install the software to keep making the type of money they need to make as a venture-backed company.

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gwyndion (profile), 26 May 2006 @ 4:50am

conspiracy theory
What else is new? "Cleaning up" is relative to the beholder, maybe in their eyes, the "cleaned up" the install so it is even more unobtrusive? Maybe their backers, (more than likely webroot and lavasoft) think that if no one knows it is there, then it must be ok. Never mind the uninstall leporsy that it leaves behind. Methinks these people watched too many commercials as a kid and now all they see is a way to give regular surfers the 5 minute commercial break every fifteen minutes, in the form of time needed to remove the dreaded pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-sides, and pop-tarts.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 May 2006 @ 6:25am

Re: conspiracy theory
I prefer cherry frosted
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Anonymous Coward, 26 May 2006 @ 6:50am

I've done some user support at my last job, and I recall a few times removing their garbage from user's PCs. I don't recall if this is the same company, I'm about 95% sure it is (the one who's changing their name almost as much as I change socks) but I ended up blocking their entire subnet from our network.

A path more LAN admins should follow, really. Then even if some of that junk gets on a PC, it can't communicate with it's hosts anyway.

Hope it's ok to post a link here - these little canned hosts files with a ton of junk sites in them already are a quite valuable tool. Even if you miss or don't detect some of this garbage, it'll end up blocked anyway.

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

www.dnsstuff.com is great for tracking down other info and parent domains as well.
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DittoBox, 26 May 2006 @ 3:28pm

It's Spyware not Adware
TechDirt: don't beat around the bush: It's Spyware not Adware.

I refuse to call Spyware by the name the unethical and immoral industry calls it: Adware.
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