Would You Take Investment Advice From A Spyware Distributor?

from the your-customers-are-gonna-love-that dept

Thu, Nov 2nd 2006 9:57am — Joseph Weisenthal

It turns out that record labels and movie studios aren't the only companies that treat their customers like criminals. So do writers of investment newsletters. The investment newsletter industry is basically what it sounds like. A company or an individual writes up a regular (often monthly) report filled with forecasts and picks and then send it to clients, for what is typically a rather high fee. But they know content like this is easily copied and passed around, so some of them, even in this day and age, are sent on physical paper by mail, in an attempt to make it just a little more difficult to re-distribute it than forwarding an email. The writer of one newsletter, who does distribute it electronically, is suing one of its corporate customers for copying it and passing it around. And how did he find this out? Because through his website, he installed spyware on the computers of all his clients that tracks what happens to the document. Even if he successfully sues the company, you really have to wonder about whether this was a good idea. Now all of his corporate clients, of which there are many, know him as a distributor of spyware, so either they'll stop doing business with the guy -- or maybe they'll get someone from IT to just disable it.

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.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

7 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Ryan, 2 Nov 2006 @ 10:45am

class action?
can't all of his customers now sue him for this?

I've always thought installing something on somebody's computer without consent should be (if it isn't already) illegal... and for him to sue his customer, he has to admit to breaking the law himself.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Robert, 2 Nov 2006 @ 10:47am

Past and Present
It used to be illegal for people to do this... maybe it still is? I can never be sure anymore, since so many big companies are getting away with it. Even if Sony replaced tons of CD's with user tracking DRM, I don't think they were really 'punished'. That must be why there's a new story everyday saying how X company put tracking software on their customers before claiming it was an honest mistake. The local DA on this case however already has an admittance of guilt here, and I'd like to see this guy taken down and made an example of.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
John, 2 Nov 2006 @ 11:38am

sue?
I think legally someone had to click a button that said "I agree."

Someone had to know about the spyware prior to this revelation.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2006 @ 11:49am

Re: class action?
who said the content management and reporting software (spyware) was installed without consent? ever heard of an EULA?

I read TFA but I didn't see any mention of it. Surely they had to click AGREE or OK on something with an EULA before having access to the paid content on his website, probably in the same process as signing up with their cc/whatever info to pay for that content...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2006 @ 11:57am

not really, just clicking i agree doesn't mean you read the elua. how many people read every elua for computer stuff?

i don't think i've read one through and through
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Walter Dnes, 2 Nov 2006 @ 4:28pm

Was it
He could easily do an HTML newsletter, that includes an image from his webserver. While that might be reprehensible, I don't think it's illegal. But installing executable code is totally another thing.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Matt Bennett, 24 May 2007 @ 11:30am

*shrug* Most sales organizations use similar tracking cookies and html files.
[ link to this | view in thread ]