About Unwantedlinks
Let me
introduce my self, my name is Debbie, I am the developer of this
site. I first brought this site on line in November of 2001. I
have nothing to sell and only wish to provide as much up to date
information as possible. I hold no allegaince to any outside companies
or individuals. Although I have no official standing as a nonprofit
organization, all the work, research and development of this site
has been totally absorbed and expended and personally completed
by me.
I started
this site after finding several dozen eZula TopText links covering
the informational text of my primary web business web site while
working on a freelance assignment. I was quite mystified to find
that my informational text was unexplainably turned into links
leading to a wide assortment of competitors.
I was
outraged and angry and determined to find out every thing I could
about this new form of "hacking" which was stealing
away all my potential customers and clients. At that point I made
a decision to fight back with the three strongest weapons I had
at my disposal - my intelligence, my computer and my web development
skills which is the modern day equivalent of the pen is mightier
than the sword.
The results
of my detective work and research is what led to the development
of this site, which started over three years ago. During the past
three years I have more or less devoted all my spare time and
energies into researching the problems of spyware and consumer
privacy and putting everything I have uncovered into the development
of this site and the site has grown tremendously in scope since
I first published it on line.
My original
goal and focus was to assist web masters and site owners cope
with the concerns and problems caused by unethical contextual
advertising linking. However, I soon found out that these new
ad technologies were also connected to the spyware industry. This
discovery greatly disturbed me since I had no true idea of the
total amount of information that spyware products could gather
let alone a true picture of what they do with the information
or which third parties they might sell it to. Once this was uncovered
my concerns grew for the security and privacy of the consumers
who are downloading these type of programs. This lead me to examining
the whole issue of consumer privacy. Therefore, since I have come
on line I have broadened the scope of this site to include a great
deal of information regarding a variety of privacy concerns since
these abuses effect all of us as a whole and my mission became
tri fold; to educate consumers about spyware, to educate consumers
about their eroding on and off line privacy, and to assist web
site owners in ways to protect their web sites.
It is becoming increasing
apparent that the advances taking place within the internet
community are occurring faster than the legal community can
address. In fact the lack of legal legislation to protect consumers
privacy and site owners property rights is both frustrating
and frightening. Abuses are running rampant while many of our
legislators posture and debate and ultimately make huge concessions
to the lobbyists promoting the interests of the business who
are profiting from the sale and exploitation of our personal
histories and information and leaving us vulnerable to hackers
as well as identity thieves.
My site is now fully dedicated
to raising consumer awareness to the perilous state of consumer
privacy both on and off line and to fight for stronger laws and
legislation's to protect the rights of individuals rather than
the interests of big business to profit from the bartering and
exploitation of our personal information.
However, I have not abandoned
our original purpose which is to assist other web designers and
web site owners against unethical advertisers who use new forms
of technology to unethically misdirect consumers and undermine
our ability to conduct lawful business due to the various forms
of contextual ad linking and banner switching technologies.
Hopefully this site will
develop into a location where both consumers as well as designers
and webmasters can share ideas and help others who's web sites
or lives have been negatively impacted by these new technologies
and abuses.
Any donations received will help me to continue
to pay this sites hosting costs as well as other expenses for
research and development so that I can continue to provide users
with the most up-to-date information as possible.
A few additional words about me
I
am not a software developer or a high tech programmer, I am just
a well informed struggling web designer trying to make a living
in New York which also happens to be the home to many of the giant
internet marketing and adversting companies detailed on this site.
I am the "chef cook & bottle washer"
and sole developer of unwantedlinks. Everything you see here from
layout, graphics and editorial content was researched, developed
and, except for a few editorials was written exclusively by me,
which has been a very time consuming task.
I recently had a very serious car accident, which
has slowed me down greatly, therefore I have not been able to
update the site during the past few months, so please forgive
me if things are getting a tiny bit outdated. My recovery has
been slow after suffering multiple traumas and a sever head injury
which had me in a coma for a few weeks.
Since I am a web designer by trade, I would welcome
any offers for freelance design work or employment that might
come my way since my outspokenness against these unethical merketing
companies seems to have limited some of my employment opportunies
here in the "Big Apple".
If any
one is interested in hiring me to design or update their web sites
please check out either of my other design sites: www.stclairs-designs.com
or www.libusinesswebs.com.
I would like to express
my special thanks to Andrew Clover of http://doxdesk.com
who is the author of the parasite testing script which I am using
to help consumers find out if they have spyware installed on their
computers. The original script is available for use at his site
http://doxdesk.com/
Sincerely,
Debbie St.Clair
Founder of unwantedlinks.com
News Stories &
Press Releases About My Work:
http://www.wtwo.com/_techtalk/default.asp?mode=shownews&id=151
Annoying
Adware - NBC
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/features/111402_spyware.html
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/den/call7forhelp/stories/call7forhelp-179293220021118-171114.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/15/scitech/pcanswer/main525614.shtml
http://www.abc10.com/Global/story.asp?S=964764&nav=6uyMAAfy
http://www.nbc10.com/money2/1699614/detail.html
http://www.nbc10.com/consumeralert/1755029/detail.html
http://www.miami.com/mld/bayarea/business/columnists/4251956.htm
http://www.theksbwchannel.com/technology/1783868/detail.html
http://www.nbc5.com/news/1743700/index.html?subid=10101401
http://www.msnbc.com/local/WMAQ/A1369894.asp
http://www.nbc5.com/money/1743700/detail.html
MY CALL TO ACTION!
We as site owners,
developers, and consumers
need to work together!
Over the course of
time we as an industry have had to develop new laws and regulations,
etiquette and procedures against hacking, spamming and plagiarism.
Now it is time to complete the fight for our privacy rights!
We all need to fight
for stronger laws and protections to protect our privacy rights.
Large businesses, and On-line Advertising companies have strong
lobbing groups with financial backing to fight against the implementation
of privacy laws, we on the other hand have only a few privacy
advocates with limited funding trying to fight for the rights
of consumers. However we can still get our voices heard if each
of us takes the time to write to our senators and congressmen
to let them know how we feel about the abuse our privacy. Currently
there are a number of privacy proposals moving through our legislative
processes. All we need to do is help push them though by getting
our voices heard. This can be a simple as sending them an e-mail.
Listed below are several links which can assist is finding and
contacting your congressmen and Senators.
Write your Senators
& Congressmen and let them know how you feel!
Senator John Edwards
Introduces
'Spyware Control Act'
http://www.senate.gov/~edwards/press/
Offical US Senate
- State listing of US Senators
http://www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state.cfm
Alphabetical listing
with emails for US Senators
http://www.senate.gov/contacting/index.cfm
Find & Contact
your US Congressman
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
I
would like to also "shout out" to any lawyers who specialize
in Internet law to contact us if they might be interested in exploring
the merits of a class action law suit against eZula for unfair
competition in the market place.
WebMasters, our fight
to protect our property rights from unethical linking has only
just begun. There are no clear cut laws to address this issue.
We need legal expertise and experts regarding Internet law to
help us fight for the right to control the viewable content of
our web sites. Although there are a number of possible legal avenues
we can take as individuals we must work together to to find the
most effective which will stop this type of abuse from occurring.
While we continue to understand
this problem we would like to ask everyone to please be considerate
and notify site owners if you discover inappropriate linking is
occurring on their web sites.
Only through education
and documentation of the uses and misuses of our rights by users
of these these technologies can we protect ourselves and our rights
as citizens of the web . If you have any helpful information (legal
or technical) on this subject or if your site has been impacted
by this type of linking please post a message on the message board.
