Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.
Jason Perlow, Sr. Technology Editor at ZDNet, is a technologist with over two decades of experience integrating large heterogeneous multi-vendor computing environments in Fortune 500 companies. Jason is currently a Technology Solution Professional with Microsoft Corp. His expressed views do not necessarily represent those of his employer.
Fascinating article here in BusinessWeek Online with never before published details about Direct Revenue's inner workings and the people involved. There are a lot of juicy tidbits, including how the Dark Arts department crafted software "torpedoes" to kill competitors', other adware vendors, software.
From CNET's News.com:Microsoft has been named in a second lawsuit over its antipiracy Windows Genuine Advantage program, which plaintiffs allege acts as "spyware" on their systems.
A new piece of very nasty malware has been recently discovered on spyware help forums, first here and again here. The file name is wgavn.exe and it creates a service named "Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Notification",
From the Seattle PI:A computer user is suing Microsoft Corp. over the company's Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy tool, alleging that it violates laws against spyware.
Here’s a lesson in Conflict of Interest 101. A new so-called adware removal program hit the net recently — literally hit the net as in being downloaded through exploits and bundled with other nasty-ware like DollarRevenue and Look2Me. This program is called AdwareFinder.
In the course of my work, I see or hear about a lot of sites used for phishing and for distribution of malware. There are teams of people working constantly toward getting these shut down, but some just keep distributing malware even after the ISP/hosting company is notified.
Claria, formerly known as Gator, issued a statement on their website stating that all GAIN software will stop displaying pop up ads on July 1, 2006. That sounds like a good thing, yes? Claria will cease supporting all GAIN supported applications on October 1, 2006.
Ben Edelman has another revealing write up - this time on ad networks, spyware and porn pop-ups and these are not happening on adult oriented sites. It's happening on sites where sexually-explicit content would not be anticipated.
Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) anti-piracy tool has angered a lot of people and rightfully so in my opinion. Fellow ZDNet bloggers have explained the details of the software along their concerns.
SunbeltBLOG has posted an analysis of Microsoft’s pricing for their new security products, One Care and Antigen, calling Microsoft on predatory pricing aimed at putting the rest of the security vendors out of business.