A Spam, Scam And Virus Alert (2)

Fight The 'Contextual Advertising' Scam

Introduction

Contextual advertising is a euphemism for a scam that involves the furtive installation and/or use of a new form of spamware. If you are unfamiliar with this concept or the danger it poses to the Internet as a whole, please read the first part of this 2-part article entitled The Threat Of 'Contextual Advertising'.

The Problem

This article focuses on the eZula program, TopText, but my arguments apply to any 'contextual advertising' program, including Surf+ and any successors to eZula. Make no mistake about it; Pandora's box has been opened.

There are many things that could be done but what is needed most is immediate action. There is no time to waste. Some procedures that might work are listed below, together with my assessment of how effective each might prove, particularly in terms of time. Some might work short-term, others more in the long term. Therefore these are not 'either-or' options but more like priorities. Here are the considerations I made and the reasoning that led me to my conclusion: that we are dealing with spam, that we need to recognize it as such, label it accordingly, and fight it on that basis.

Option 1—Uninstall It

According to eZula there is nothing to stop those whose machines have been infected from uninstalling the software by going through the usual procedure. Website owners should definitely encourage their visitors to do this. After all, it's their privacy that's being invaded. However, they need help to totally eradicate it, for the reasons given above. WhirlyWiryWeb has instructions to help manually remove all TopText files at
http://www.whirlywiryweb.com/removeezula.htm . Advanced HTML For Beginners also offers a solution using Mephisto's uninstall program at
http://www.ahfb2000.com/ezula/ezula.php

Option 2—Complain

Complaining to eZula Inc is unlikely to have any effect at all but may be useful as a precursor to some form of legal action. There is currently an online petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/toptext/ and the last time I looked there were 518 signatories. Personally I think the wording of the petition is lame, at best.

Complaining to 'advertisers', if enough people do it, could persuade them to stop using the eZula 'service' once they realize that they're trashing their own reputations. Trouble is, by then it's a bit late and you'd be letting them off the hook after they've gleefully stolen your traffic. The other problem is that you need to have some way of finding out early who the latest advertisers are, since new people will by now be jostling to join the feeding frenzy, so to speak.

Complaining to the download sites that are making the program available might be more promising but not in the long term. eZula could pre-empt such moves by relying on their own dedicated sites and using the pirated music networks to continue to get the word out.

Option 3—Block It

Opting-out, for website owners, really amounts to playing eZula's game according to eZula's rules. I wouldn't advise it.

They deal in spam and will probably react as spammers might be expected to (responding to an email spam attack by replying to an opt-out address, for example, almost always results in an increase in spam because it's confirmation of a bona fide address). Besides, opting out is tantamount to condoning their previous action of opting you in without permission. However, if you really want to, send the URLs of the domains you want blocked to support@ezula.com. It remains to be seen if eZula will actually honor such requests—but don't hold your breath!

One of the best short-term solutions is using technology to beat technology. I reiterate short-term though, for the same reason that Star Wars won't work in the long term; it will only cause a flurry of research into ways to beat it. SearchKing provides a script to stop TopText from altering your web pages. It is available from:
http://www.searchking.com/ezulakiller/

Option 4—Resort to Law

This is the most popular solution for most people but they are, to my mind, largely out of touch with reality in the real world and probably totally out of touch with the way things are in cyberspace. Sorry to be so brutally frank folks, but this just doesn't work in the short term, and is not very effective in the long term. There are so many things wrong with this approach that I haven't got the space to go into them all here.

Just look at the anti-spam laws if you don't believe me. Sure, there have been a few token court cases, but have you noticed any decrease in spam? Most spam is simply routed through servers in Taiwan or the Philippines, or they find some other way to get round the law. And the law is so slow. The anti-trust case against Microsoft is illustration enough surely?

However, there has been plenty of talk about a class action lawsuit against the company, the advertisers who are financing them, and the sites offering the program for download. (These include McAfee, the formerly respected anti-virus software company (spot the irony!) and C|Net's download.com, where it is currently the fourth most downloaded program. These companies are apparently unaware, or could it be unconcerned, about the ethical questions involved, quite apart from the legal implications, as they greedily continue to support eZula.) I wish the case well, if it ever gets off the ground but in reality something more immediate is required.

Option 5—Inform

A vital strategy, it seems to me, is to inform all site visitors with a prominent warning notice. Below is one suggestion that you might want to modify to suit your own site. The 'more information' mentioned at the end is the page where the HTML version of the document you are reading now is archived. The difficult bit is making it prominent enough to be noticed without detracting from your content. For a more powerful message, look also under the heading 'Castigate Participants As Spammers ' below.

Important Information for Visitors

If you see oddly placed yellow underlines or green or yellow highlights on websites you visit, the chances are that an insidious stealth program has secretly installed itself on your computer. These act like viruses because, instead of you seeing just the information you want, they alter web pages so that you see unsolicited commercial links (spam) that an advertiser has paid someone (not us!) to display. We advise that you uninstall it as quickly as possible by going to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and look through the list for TopText, ContextPro, HOTtext, or Surf+. Then click the Add/Remove button. For more information go to:

http://www.101internetanswers.com/alerta.htm

Option 6—Castigate Participants As Spammers

Denigrating 'advertisers', and anyone else participating in any way (e.g. download sites), for spamming the World Wide Web, which is what they're doing, will do more to turn Internet culture in the right direction than any other single thing. In other words treat them as pariahs to be shunned and ridiculed; discourage anyone else from doing business with them at risk of being similarly shunned, report them to their Internet Service Providers, where they have one, and insist that they be shut down for spamming; vigorously encourage site visitors to email them pointing out that they will never do business with spammers etc.

If we develop an outcry against this behavior on the basis that it is spam, which it is, it will die on its feet. Everyone hates spam. Your site visitors are plagued with it just as you are. Once they realize that this is what it's all about they will be as keen as you are to stamp it out. Of course it will continue, just as spam does. But the only people who indulge in email spam nowadays are fools and newbies. The fools become outcasts and the newbies learn a lesson they never forget. Both either disappear or spend months, sometimes years, trying to retrieve their reputation.

Below is a suggested notice you might want to use on your website. Please feel free to modify and use it however you wish. You can see how we are using it on our sites by going to http://www.101answers.com/

Spam Alert

It has come to our attention that some spammers have started using virus-like programs to spam the World Wide Web. These programs attach their files to computers like yours and then change nearly every page you visit to show intrusive advertising messages that link to the spammer's sites. Not only that but many send out encoded messages from your computer about your activities. If you start seeing strange yellow underlines, or yellow or green highlights on web pages, then your computer has been infected. We recommend:

That you do not click on the highlighted links
That you never ever buy from the companies responsible
That you warn everyone you can about this scam

Click on the following link to learn more:

http://www.101internetanswers.com/alerta.htm

Networking

In order to create awareness of this problem it is essential that everyone can go to a central forum where they can freely exchange ideas etc. The Open Directory Project has made an excellent start by devoting a section to it at:
http://dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Business/Allegedly_Unethical_Firms/Ezula/

The latest news I can report is that there is now a website totally devoted to this topic with links to other resources, in particular the excellent Get High (Traffic) Forums at:
http://www.scumware.com/