How Spyware Can Hurt Your Web Business &
Earnings
It is difficult for members of the internet community
and web masters in general to understand that Spyware is more
than just a problem for individual consumers and computer users.
The fact is that spyware can and does have far reaching impact
on the internet as a whole and to web businesses in particular
since it has the ablility to switch paid advertising, alter affiliate
links and add contextual ads to the viewable surface of web sites.
There are a large number of unethical companies
who are utilizing spyware to circumvent fair trade practices by
manipulating spyware infected computers into added competitor
links on our sites, altering affiliate relationship strings, and
altering paid advertising all of which . We can not
longer afford to look at the spyware industry as just a problem
of end users.
As web site owners we all work very hard to try
to gain and increase traffic to our web sites. We spend hours
developing our layouts and looks, we try to include content that
our viewers will find interesting and informative, we expend money,
time and energy resolving programming and technical glitches to
make sure that our sites look and operate well on a variety of
platforms.
When all that is complete then we spend hours registering our
sites with search engines, as well as working with banner exchange
programs and negotiating mutual business relationships all with
the intention of gaining traffic with the hope that our viewers
will be impressed and want to buy our products or use our services
and most of all come back.
In addition, many of us expend a great deal of time and resources
developing outside marketing campaigns, sending out expensive
literature to advertise and promote our businesses and many of
us pay for expensive banner ad promotions. In additon, many web
sites are dependent on affiliate earnings to help support thier
web sites. However, all our work is defeated
and our web earnings suffer when the words in our own informational
body text of our pages are transformed and are used as portal
links to other peoples sites pulling our viewers off and away
or the banner advertisements we pay for and sponsor get switched
by Gator or when spyware programs "steal" our affiliate
earnings.
The loss of potential revenue due to this type
of "theft" can be enormous but hard to estimate
depending which business or industry is hit and how many unauthorized
links are broadcasted for a targeted industry and who the advertisers
are for eZula and Gator. What is even more alarming is that all
web sites are effected including corporations as large as AOL-Time
Warner or Ebay right down to the small one or two man operation
-- even search engines, our prime exposure platform, are not immune.
The only sites that do not seem effected are eZula's and Gater's
paying advertising clients who are allowed to "opt-out".
Here is an interesting article which explains this concept contextual
advertising and Gator in more depth: Is
gatoring unfair or illegal?
Many of the larger corporations can absorb these losses and have
the legal resources to combat these unethical advertisers, (although
currently legal victories are few) however, smaller business -
who do not have these options can lose tremendous
amounts of potential business and earnings. Since currently
there are no specific regulations or laws to regulate this new
technology the abusers are currently free to "vandalize and
violate" any web site more or less free of repercussions.
Unauthorized Contextual Links
Unauthorized links can have lasting and profound effects on your
companies market shares when sales and click through rates suddenly
fall off due to outside companies pulling your visitors right
off of your web sites or culling viewers directly off of search
engines and over to their own web sites. Corporate reputations
can suffer irreparable harm depending on where these unauthorized
links send the viewers to. (For more information on contextual
advertising see our article Who's Stealing
Your Web Traffic!)
Currently the industries which are being the most severely impacted
by this new technology are banking, finance, insurance, on-line
shopping, travel, hosting companies, and internet related businesses
and the list is growing! (see our
KeyWords list!)
A disturbing aspect of several of these programs is that they
will allow any one who downloads their software to add their own
links to the surface of other peoples web sites therefore the
links can lead to just about any where you can imagine as in the
case of Surf+ users adding links to pornography to the surface
Disney web site.
Affiliate Earning Theft
Another alarming aspect of many of these new . This is accomplished by redirecting
the affiliate"string" to credit the spyware/adware program
instead of the true web site owner via the end users browser.
For more information see our article "Who's
Stealing Your Affiliate Earnings!"
Gator's Ad & Banner Switching
Currently we do not have a fix for
Gator.
Based on our research Gator can target and dispatch competitor
pop-up ads over your site as well as switch the ads you sponsor.
However, they have been involved in litigation with the Interactive
Advertising Bureau (IAB) and they have temporarily suspended their
ad switching program. For additional information see our article:
Is Gator Highjacking Your Banner Ads?
How Do You Know If Your Web Site or Business
Is Effected?
The Bad news -- since this technology can effect all web sites
worldwide in all probability YES your site and your business is
probably effected or soon will be - it all depends on the words
you use to describe, sell and market your business or products.
Since the effects of eZula's broadcasting of smart linked
key words and phrases impacts on the entire internet community
world wide these links can appear on any web site in the world
that is using a targeting word or phrase. This includes your own
web site and the major search engines! The bottom line is that
where ever one of eZula's targeted text strings appears on the
web it is transformed into a working hot link leading to one of
eZula's advertisers. Since this includes major search engines
it can effectively impact on your business by misdirecting potential
customers even before they get to you.
(See the screen shot to
see this in action.)
Currently the industries which are being the most severely impacted
by this new technology are banking, finance, insurance, on-line
shopping, travel, hosting companies, and internet related businesses
and the list is growing! eZula is actively signing new clients
regularly and it is full time task to monitor the web for new
links.Here is a list
of known
KeyWords
that are currently being used and are viewable to TopText
enabled browsers. Feel free to check to see if any words you might
be using in your web site are listed. Currently eZula's TopText
is the most wide spread abuser and eZula has managed to sneak
the plug-in into over 120 million browsers by incorporating them
into other free downloadable software products.
Visit our eZula Hall of Shame
to see who eZula's paying advertisers are and don't hesitate to
drop them a line to complain. If we all make enough noise maybe
they will stop participating in this shamefully unethical practice.
Currently, Surf+ has suspended it's linking program which is
good news for us, however, they have the capability to resume
at any time. Surf+ links were notorious for leading to inappropriate
pornographic web sites with the click of an innocent looking word
link. Gator is another company that is causing havoc across the
internet and is still up and running with their banner ad switching
campaign.Unfortunately, we have not yet found a fix for this.
We have an interesting article on Gator in our Features Section.
There is another small program that should be mentioned called
Browsup, they appear to be a small stand alone program. Although
to our knowledge they are not doing any mass broadcasting like
eZula or large scale banner switching like Gator they are distributing
smart link plugins which allow private individuals to add links
and overlay images over existing web sites. Since the added links
of this program are placed by individuals, like Surf+, they could
lead to just about anywhere even pornography. As of this writing
it does not appear to be on a large scale and we have not found
evidence that it is being hidden in the background of other free
programs, but we do need to do more research. See our information
on Smart links to gain a full
understanding of how this new technology works. (
To find additional info on specific adware/spyware programs Click
Here)
Take any reports of seeing strange links on your site (particularly
in the text) seriously and file a complaint with the FTC. You
can file a complaint direct from this web site in our Legal
Section. We have included lots of information about the FTC
regulations. Take the time to educate your self about what your
rights are.
We suggest that you view your site on every available version
of Internet Explorer that you can. We discovered the links attached
to our site while working on someone else's computer running IE
5.5! - it just happened to have eZula installed.
Don't wait for your business to to fall off! Check
out our resources for protecting your site now. All of the suggested
fixes and scripts for prevention are freely distributed to any
one who needs them.
For more information of how to protect your web site please see
our WebMaster Support
section.
Additional Concerns
In addition, many of these spyware programs can pose significant
security risks to businesses. Many of these programs, in addition
to being included in downloadable software, can be installed on
business computers through standard web surfing. Once installed
many of these programs can leave a back door open to hacking and
many have the ablility to search out confidental information which
could be transmitted. Since these types of programs are not targeted
by antivirus programs it is advised that businesses should routinely
have their computers checked for potential spware and adware and
whenever possible have a firewall installed on employee workstations.
(see our information of Spyware
and how to remove spyware)
Malicious Spyware Hackers
There also commercial programs that can be remotely installed
onto computers (yes even business computers) to quietly monitor
your employees while they perform their work. These keystroke
loggers can capture every thing your employees do on their computers!
Although the original targeted market for these types of spy products
are parents and spouses these types of programs can be sent to
unsuspecting businesses. There are a number of commercial products
that are currently on the market that allows someone to email
a malicious installer to unsuspecting receivers which will spy
on the receivers through the use of keystroke loggers and can
even take screen shots of the infected computer while it is in
use. These programs can be remotely monitored by the sender to
gather confidential business information. One of the key distributors
of this types of malware are iSpyNOW and other programs include
SpyBuddy, Matrix Spy Software. The FBI is also investigating another
company called LoverSpy which sends an email greeting complete
with malware installer which also has these same capabilities.
'Spyware' steps out of the shadows
Last modified: November 19, 2003, 4:00 AM PST
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Late in July, an e-mail that hit employee in-boxes at a British
credit card and finance company carried a secret payload--"spyware"
capable of recording confidential corporate data and sending it
over the Net.
Labeled "Wedding Invitation," the e-mail looked at first
like spam or an ordinary worm. But consultants at security company
Clearswift now believe that the e-mail was part of a targeted
attack on the victim company aimed at extracting specific information--a
nightmare scenario in the corporate security world.
Clearswift says the incident highlights a dangerous new trend
in computer breaches, where spyware applications increasingly
play a starring role. Relatively benign attacks intended to win
attention by disrupting networks are being eclipsed by sophisticated
attempts to steal passwords and other confidential information
that can be used to deliver cash.
"The good old days of script kiddies and geeks are well gone,"
said Pete Simpson, manager of Clearswift's ThreatLab division.
"These are criminal gangs, and the motive is clearly profit."
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5108965.html
It is highly recommended for businesses to check
to see if their employees have accidentally downloaded spyware
programs on their office computers. This is especially true if
any employees have been getting lots of pop-up ads on their computers
since it is an indication that that the machine has gotten infected.
This is important even if your network is "protected"
for more more information see:
http://www.nbc10.com/consumeralert/1755029/detail.html
Written by Debbie St.Clair
UnwantedLinks.com
Reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
| **
Spyware & Adware Test Scan **
If you are viewing this site with Internet
Explorer and see an alert displayed here then your computer
is infected with one or more spyware programs that we can
scan for.
Please note: Currently
we can scan for a 122 distinct spyware programs that can
effect PC users and the alert will only be display if a
specific targeted program is identified. Unfortunately,
we are limited to finding only certain types of spyware
and there are many other forms of spyware and adward that
we can not currently test for. If you do not see any alert
displayed in the center of this notice then our scan did
not detect any of the 122 spyware programs we can scan for,
however, there are still many other programs out there that
we can not yet scan for.
In addition, our test scan does not
work well with NetScape or other browsers, if you suspect
that you might have spyware on your computer please feel
free to check this page while using Internet Explorer. Also,
if you have a Personal FireWall installed it may interfere
with our ability to scan your computer for Parasite Adware
and Spyware.
To include this test can on your site see the information
below. |
Alert your viewers about spyware
with our spyware detection script!
Help us raise awareness of the problems of spyware by alerting
your website visitors if they have spyware installed on
their computers. If we can alert consumers to this problem
it will benefit all of us as a whole. Only through awareness
will it be possible to eventually stop these unethical marketing
practices. If you would like to help us simply add the following
remote script to your web site which will alert your viewers
and visitors if they have spyware installed on their computers.
<script language="JavaScript"
src="http://www.unwantedlinks.com/parasite/parasite3.js">
</script>
This script can be placed anywhere in the body of your
site and remains totally invisible unless it detects at
least one of several browser based spyware plug-ins (including
TopText). Therefore, the spyware alert will only be viewable
to those viewers who have at least one of the identified
spyware programs installed at which point it will display
an simple text alert letting them know about it. Our script
can currently identify 124 different spyware programs. (
For more information
and to see a sample click here!)
Or feel free to use a copy of our spyware quotes script
to help raise awareness which appears in our left panel
<script language="JavaScript"
src="http://www.unwantedlinks.com/spywarequotes-feed.js"
type="text/JavaScript"></script>
This script will feed one quote at the exact location it
is placed within your site. It rotates a total of 30 random
spyware quotes. (This script will display additional random
quotes if it is included more than once) You can enclose
it in font tags to match your site text.
Here is a sample of how it looks.
|
Special
TopText & Surf+ UpDate 11/02/04
We have discovered that there are Contextual Advertising
Links which look very similar to TopText & Surf+
links which are legitimate and sponsored by participating
web sites for more information
click here! |
Alert all your friends and business associates about
this new internet threat which undermines all of our businesses
so that we can fight it together by filing complaints with the
FTC. With enough complaints we can get the FTC to take action
against eZula and amend the existing regulations to included specific
regulations for this type of marketing abuse.
It is important to note that although we can take steps
to protect our individual web sites we still have no control over
the links that are misdirecting surfers directly from other web
sites and the major the search engines. This is a clear violation
of regulations set down by the FTC against unfair competition
in the market place. Please take the time to check out our legal
information section to file a complaint against eZula with the
FTC!
Consumers
These new programs effect you since they use spyware to do
their dirty work -- please check out our Consumer
Info section for more information on spyware and how to protect
your privacy! (Additional note: GoZilla, Limewire, Bearshare,
and Audiogalaxy also include spyware & theftware programs
such as Gator, TopText, Cydoor and SaveNow! For more information
see our
Help & Reference
Guide)
What is needed are laws to protect web site owners from
this type of unethical advertising abuse!
Please show your support by adding a link back to your site
on our Supporters page and help us raise awareness by displaying
one of our logo banners on your site
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