Apparently No One Wanted To Buy Claria's Adware/Spyware Remains
from the so-it-seems dept
Claria, which began its life as Gator, one of the earliest of the annoying surreptitious install adware providers tried to make a big splash over the last few months, moving away from the popup business and into the "behavioral marketing" business (conveniently avoiding the fact that the behavioral part was gleaned from those surreptitious, often unwanted, installs). Earlier this year, they announced triumphantly that they were launching a web portal and shedding the pop-up adware business (again avoiding the software that monitors your behavior bit). It was also noteworthy that they were supposedly trying to sell the GAIN adware platform, rather than just shut it down. For a company that supposedly admitted that popup adware was a bad thing, to then sell it off for money so others could keep doing it seemed a little questionable. So, while other adware players are merging incompetently, it looks like Claria can't even sell off its adware business. The company has alerted users that they will stop receiving popups as of July 1st, though the company will keep monitoring all their surfing habits through October 1st (which makes you wonder why the company thought it had a case in threatening anyone who called their app spyware -- it clearly monitors behavior and sends it back to the company). Still, we have to ask, is there anyone out there who will actually be upset to learn that Claria will no longer pollute their surfing experience with popup ads?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Popup ads are good.
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Re: Firefox
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Re: Re: Firefox
It's a bit like the old "Macs NEVER get viruses" argument. They don't get them because most virus writers don't waste time creating viruses that will only affect a relatively small percentage of computers in use. Malware/Spyware/Adware writers are pretty much of the same mind. They want to hit the most users humanly possible, so they write their garbage for Windows PCs and Internet Exploder.
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Good - Claria *is* spyware.
Bad Claria, Bad.
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Re:
There's a strange parallel between what you say there and the DEA's drug scheduling system. Schedule I drugs are described as "having no benefit whatsoever". The only problem is the idiots scheduled marijuana and LSD under Schedule I along with heroin, methamphetamine and crack cocaine so if we were to schedule software, the monkeys who write and ratify the laws would undoubtedly schedule Linux along with adware/spyware.
Good point though.
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Intrusive ads ruin the internet
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Re: Groovy
LSD showed some promise for use in
therapy for mental disease and for
research in understanding mechanisms
of the brain. It was also used to help
terminally ill people cope with their
impending demise among other
possible benefits.
Heroin isn't much different than morphine.
Meth was used as a diet pill and was once
an ingrediant in contact cold capsules.
Even crack cocaine could be useful in some
circumstances.
As mister Lillly said a drug without any side-effects
isn't much of a drug.
I have mixed feelings on this, people shouldn't
abuse drugs but the cure (the war on drugs) is
worse than the disease.
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Promote liberty and personal responsibility.
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anyway
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Also, quit forrwarding dim-witted rubbish from your e-mail. Trust me, people don’t enjoy receiving enormously untrue garbage that’s been fact check by an ape and requires the intelligence of a grease stain to deem as fact.
I love you grandma but enough is enough!
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jhRrPowq43
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