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Adware Rant
For my day job,
I work in tech support. 75% of my calls are related to my customers
having some form of adware on their computers. For years I have focused
on the end user aspect of adware, completely unaware that there is a
second victim involved. That victim is the innocent and ethical
webmaster.
A
webmaster spends countless hours developing, coding, uploading and
promoting their websites. The spend their own money on a domain and
hosting. They attempt to recoup some of their expenses by hosting
affiliate links, such as mine, to places like Amazon and Expedia. In
the event a web visitor, such as yourself, does choose to click on an
affiliate link and make a purchase, the commissions from that sale go
not to the original webmaster, but to the adware that hijacks the sale.
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Here's an example of how it works.
Joe Webmaster runs a website about stamp collecting. Joe's not all that
computer literate, but he knows enough to put a nice site together. He
spends about 20 hours a week on it. He's very knowledgeable and has
created an interesting, informative and popular site. After a few
months, he's built up a steady stream of new and repeat visitors. He
needs to upgrade his hosting plan now, because he's getting so many
visitors. Between hosting and domain costs, Joe's hobby is now costing
him about $35.00 per month.
While
surfing
around one night, Joe finds an ad for GenericAds (this is a fictitious
company, just used for example). Joe reads that GenericAds will pay
webmasters $0.10 for every visitor that comes to his website. Joe is
not all that technical, and therefore unable to read between the lines
of their slick marketing proposal. All Joe sees is that when a visitor
comes to his website, GenericAds will provide them with a way to get
new features, and Joe gets money. He thinks he may not totally
recoup
his monthly expenses, but this will help a little. This sounds
great,
so he signs up. Joe is sent a few lines of code that he can add into his
web page. He uploads the new file, and then the damage can start.
Mary
Surfer is
searching Google for stamp collecting. Joe's popular page comes up in
the search results. She clicks the link for Joe's site, and as
the
page loads, so does the browser object for GenericAds. She's completely
unaware of this, as it silently loads in the background. All she may
notice is her PC suddenly running a little slower, but Joe's got so
many stamp graphics on his site she believes this is the cause.
The
next day Mary
continues surfing stamp collecting sites. Again she notices that her
computer is a little slower than it was yesterday, but she's not
technical enough to investigate why. As she's surfing, she comes across
the site of Jane Stamp. Jane has a site just as interesting as Joe's,
and she also has an online store that sells Amazon books. Mary
clicks through one of Jane's Amazon links for an interesting book, and
purchases it.
Who gets the commission? Not Jane, who took the time to put
together a well designed and informative site. Not even clueless Joe,
who was the means in which Mary got infected. Poor Joe infected himself
the first time he looked at his own website with the new code
installed. The commission goes to the owners of GenericAds.
One week later, the GenericAds on Mary's machine phones home back to
their developer with the information it's discovered about Mary.
Maybe GenericAds has also partnered with another unethical advertiser,
and while it is making it's call, it's also depositing new software on
Mary's machine, again without her knowledge or consent. Once Mary
reboots her computer, she's bombarded with a plethora of popup ads,
many of them pornographic. Same thing happens to good old Joe. And neither of them have any idea why.
This is only one way people get infected. Please educate yourself on this problem, and take back your privacy.
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It
is too easy for webmasters to place adware code on their websites.
Hoping for the quick buck, they sign up for these programs unknowing or
uncaring about the damage they will do to the computers that belong to
their visitors. To this end, this site is adware free. I will
not join any affiliate program that pays webmasters to harm the
computers of their guests in return for a quick commission.
If
you have installed an adblocker on your machine because you are
bothered by popups, you need to know that you have only applied a
Band-Aid to a larger problem. The popups are gone, but your adware
infection remains. Your surfing habits are still being tracked
and reported. Your personal information and privacy are still at risk.
Any web purchase you make goes to support unethical advertisers.
Please take this moment now to visit either:
Spywareinfo.com
Spywareguide.com
and run their free online spyware scanner.
Please also be sure you have both of the following programs installed on your computer:
Ad-Aware by LavaSoftUSA.com
Spybot Search and Destroy by Safer-Networking.org
These
programs are free, and absolutely necessary. Remember - popups are not
the problem, they are only a symptom! Don't Band-Aid your symptoms -
remove your infection, and reclaim your privacy.
A
small code of script has been added inside this table. If you are
infected with some of the most prevalent adware programs, you will be
alerted below. This script graciously provided by unwantedlinks.
If the
above area is blank, please don't be lulled into complacency. You may
still have one of the 15,000+ adware packages on your PC. An
anti-spyware program is just as important as an anti-virus program. Be
sure to have one installed.
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Webmasters:
Are you just starting a site of your own, and want to add this text to
your page? Please feel free to copy this text onto your own site, given
you add the following at the bottom:
Reproduced with permission from <a href=http://www.romanticmotels.com target="_blank"> RomanticMotels.com </a>
I made this funky little graphic over at 3dtextmaker.com.
Why not head on over there and get one of your own? Or if you like this
one, feel free to copy mine to your own site if you wish (just please
don't link directly to my image).
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