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Here is the scumware update from Ben Edelman from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society – Harvard Law School
Ben Edelman is well known for his research into the matter and legal battles with Gator.
He is the author of the tool that lets you test websites for gator presence. It is cureently not active as it was an issue during litigation, but it is up and you can still see the old cached results here:
http://asp-cyber.law.harvard.edu/gator-sites/test.asp?
Here is the newsletter he sends out:
Greetings, and thanks for asking for updates about my research on spyware.
It’s been a while since I last wrote, but I have several pieces of work to announce today —1) Comments submitted to the FTC on the methods and effects of spyware. In this document, I explain how spyware works, including presenting specific personal information transmitted by both Gator and WhenU. (The WhenU transmissions are particularly notable because these transmissions seem to
violate WhenU’s own privacy policy.) Other sections of the document discuss installation methods of spyware (with special consideration of the technical methods used in drive-by downloads), frequency of advertisement display, and
performance and security effects of spyware.Methods and Effects of Spyware
<http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/ftc-031904.pdf>For more on the FTC’s call for comments, and its upcoming conference on spyware, see <http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/spyware>.
2) Analysis of recent spyware legislation. In this FAQ-style analysis, I present the major requirements of spyware legislation recently unanimously passed by both houses of the Utah state legislature and now awaiting signature by the governor. Among other provisions, the bill requires that any programs transmitting users’ usage data (as defined in the bill) provide suitable license agreements and uninstall routines. Despite the seemingly-benign status of these requirements, the bill faces opposition
from companies as distinguished as AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, which have apparently concluded, in my view mistakenly, that the bill somehow interferes with legitimate software and practices. Read my analysis and decide for yourself!A Close Reading of Utah’s Spyware Control Act
<http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/utah-mar04>3) My new web site. You’ll notice that the URLs above point to
benedelman.org, not the Berkman Center servers I’ve previously used.Indeed, my time at the Berkman Center has come to an end — a natural result as I begin to increase the intensity of my Ph.D. dissertation work, and likely scale back other projects. But watch my new site for news of other projects. And, as always, do keep in touch with comments, suggestions, and requests.
Ben Edelman
http://www.benedelman.orgInteresting post Dominique!
I use a program called “Spybot Search & Destroy” on my computer to hunt for spyware and scumware and delete it.
This is a free program that you can download here:
http://www.safer-networking.org/
Like Norton Anti-Virus, they are constantly updating their detectioin rules to find new scumware on your computer.
It’s a great program and I use it on all my computers.
If you like it, you should make a donation to the guy who keeps it going. But it is 100% free to download and use.
I used to use a program called “AdAware” but they have not been very good about updating their detection rules and I have “SpyBot Search and Destroy” to be much better.
Yes, that is a good program.
I found that most of them get most of the bugs but all of them get something the other guy doesn’t.
When I had a trojan nothing would catch I bought the “Aluria” program.
It’s inexpensive, constantly updated, and works on everything so far, with the exception of the “seven search” search bug.
I finally found the program that was hiding it – called browser accelerator. After deleting that program (all browsers closed) I was able to delete the seven search through Aluria.
I always urge my visitors and readers to get spyware removers.
Regarding that Gator test site, you did not give the complete URL.
It should look like this:
http://asp-cyber.law.harvard.edu/gator-sites/test.asp?host=microsoft.com
If you click on that link you will see all the Gator advertisers who are targeting Microsoft.com and what keywords they are using.
If you want to know if any Gator advertisers are targeting YOU,
replace “microsoft.com” in the URL above with your website domain.For example, I changed to code to check “winwardcasino.com” :
http://asp-cyber.law.harvard.edu/gator-sites/test.asp?host=winwardcasino.com
If you click on that link you can see all the bastards that are targeting OUR gambling traffic! :madat:
Have fun.
That is the way it works. It has, however, been serving only cached results for months, and it is quite outdated.
I have not watched gator in a couple of months, but last time I looked it was a whole lot worse than this tool shows.
You are right .. I just noticed that the data date is from June 2003.
So that is the advertisers who “were” targeting us.
But I bet most of them (or maybe more) still are!
:shooter:
It was a whole lot more a couple of months ago, but I hear that the ROI for gator users is going down.
So perhaps the user number will go down too.
