Hijackware
ethical: conforming to accepted professional standards of
conduct -- Merriam-Webster OnLine: Collegiate Dictionary.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary.htm 2001. (17 August
2001).
I swear, internet marketing companies are getting more obnoxious
and unethical every day. I guess it was just naive to thing the
banner ad risen to it's highest heights of stupidity with the
"punch the money" banner. And I don't know about you, but I
didn't really believe the marketers could get any lower on the
scum scale than the exit windows that run away from the cursor
so they are more difficult to close.
Well, I was wrong and I admit I was incredibly naive.
The marketers have come up with some incredibly unethical,
horribly annoying gimmicks. The dirty tricks they are pulling
now make exit windows look like child's play. In fact, the games
these boys are playing makes the marketing methods of the
scummiest adult web sites look downright professional in
comparison.
The trend seems to have started a few years ago with a handy
little utility called Gator. This "tool" professed to offer a
great benefit to surfers - the ability to remember the contents
of forms and password entry screens. Further, since Gator is
actually pretty good at recognizing that a page contains a known
form or password entry field, it is indeed very useful. I
installed the program for a while and found it to be a wonderful
complement to my surfing.
True, it did have this annoying habit of throwing a "coupon" up
on my screen occasionally. I didn't think much about it at all -
I just closed the coupon as quick as I could. This phenomenon
didn't happen very often - in fact, at first I had difficulty
figuring out what was actually causing it to occur. I naturally
assumed this was a feature of the web site that I was visiting.
However, the coupons slowly became more and more common, and
they began appearing at the worst possible times. They
interfered with my shopping and surfing habits by breaking my
train of concentration and thought.
I began to try and understand this strange phenomenon. I quickly
realized this was a byproduct of Gator - and I soon understood
that the utility was simply "bait" to get people to install an
insidious, almost evil, advertising machine on their systems. In
fact, the program is so obnoxious and so unethical that I truly
believe no sane person would install it, no matter what the
benefit, if they completely understood what was going on.
Gator (and other similar, but less popular products) is
something called a "Browser Helper Object". What this means is
it is a small program which makes itself known to Internet
Explorer, telling IE that to send information to Gator about the
web pages that are being loaded into the browser. It's the job
of a Browser Helper Object to extend the capabilities of the
browser in a useful way. In the case of Gator, the usefulness is
to recognize forms and password entry fields so default values
can be inserted.
In addition, Gator wants to know what kinds of advertisements
are appearing on the pages that are being loaded. It also wants
to see if the page's subject is related to a product which one
of it's paid advertisers is hawking. This is it's real purpose.
The convenience is just a smoke screen.
Let's say you are surfing to your favorite shopping site and you
want to order some flowers. You proceed to the flower shop and
suddenly a "coupon" magically appears in front of you, offering
you flowers elsewhere, presumably better or at a lower cost.
Okay, let's put this in real world terms so you can understand
what's really going on. Let's pretend you are at the mall, going
from shop to shop. There is this guy (let's call him Benedict)
standing behind you with a notebook and pen in his hand. He has
a bag of flyers hanging from one shoulder and a money counting
machine on the other.
As you go from store to store Benedict watches your every move
(by the way, he has a radio and reports everything you do back
to his home office where it is permanently recorded). You go
into a clothing store and pick up a pair of jeans. Suddenly a
flyer appears under your nose, informing you there are cheaper,
better jeans in a shop down the road. You look Benedict and he
smiles nicely at you. You push the flyer out of the way and keep
shopping.
Now you go into a candy store and walk up to the counter to
order some chocolate. Again, a flyer appears in front of your
face offering you chocolate at discount prices in a competing
store. You push the flyer out of the way and pick out some
chocolate that you want to purchase. Benedict pulls out his
money counting machine, takes your wallet, counts the money,
hands it to the cashier, and returns your wallet. This, by the
way, is the "benefit" that makes it useful to have Benedict
around.
I'll bet it wouldn't take long before you either called the cops
or punched Benedict in the nose! And, of course, the store
operators would make sure Benedict was arrested and thrown in
jail, and they would sue the company for sure.
Well, guess what, it's gotten worse and more unethical, as hard
as that is to believe.
According to reports, Gator is now working on a version which
not only throws coupons in front of your face, it actually finds
banners ads and covers them up with other advertisements so
carefully and precisely that you would never know the original
ad was there.
Now Benedict runs ahead of you as you shop and replaces all of
the signs with advertisements for other stores. If you walked
through our hypothetical mall and peaked under that ad for a
movie, you might find there is actually an ad for an entirely
different movie there. The billboard might actually be
advertising something totally different. In fact, the signs in
the stores themselves could be replaced with signs directing you
to other stores.
Is this legal?
Well, Gator's terms and conditions do tell you they are going to
do this. And you are supposed to read them (all gazillion pages)
before you download the program. And of course, the terms and
conditions are written in such a user friendly and simple way
that you would certainly have no trouble completely
understanding and agreeing to their tactics. (Sarcasm
intentional).
I'm sure Gator would also argue that web sites do not own the
user's desktops. And after all, the users did agree to the terms
and conditions by installing Gator, so they must want this
"service", right?
I must admit I am just as guilty as everyone else, when it comes
to reading terms and conditions. I mean, I just downloaded the
silly thing and installed it. I did what everyone else does - I
clicked through the terms and conditions without a glance. For
all I know, I could have signed away my soul.
This is a lesson we all have to learn - by clicking through the
terms and conditions we AGREE to them. By installing a program,
we AGREE to the terms and conditions. Since the ONLY WAY to
install the program is to click through the screen containing
the terms and conditions and clicking a button that says, "yes I
read this and I understand that my soul now belongs to you and I
am happy with it", well, the companies are covered. Oh yes, and
your soul is toast.
Are programs such as this ethical?
No. Not by any definition of the word. This is unethical in
terms that the adult web sites have not even come close to.
Programs like Gator are produced by the lowest form of pond scum
- scum which is so dirty and filthy that even normal scum does
not want to be associated with it. In fact, if this pond scum
enters a pond, all of the other scum will go to a different pond
in a different country just so as not to sully their own names
any more than they already have.
What should we do about it?
First, we all need to start reading terms and conditions. The
web is based upon these poorly written, conniving and often
one-sided documents. We must ALL begin to read them, understand
them, and if we don't agree to them, then we must not install
the program or use the service.
Second, do as I have done. If you have any Spyware (programs
which report your information back to the home office) or
Hijackware (programs like Gator), uninstall it immediately
without any delay. Download Ad-Aware, run it and follow the
directions. This will allow you to safely remove all of this
junk from your system fast.
Third, if you find out that advertisers are using Hijackware,
then refuse to purchase their products. Be sure and send them an
email to let them know why you are doing so. Be polite and
direct.
Forth, if you like the Hijackware's functions but do not want to
experience it's side effects, then look for an alternative.
There are plenty of programs out there that can do what you want
without being so unethical, obnoxious and downright, well, evil
about it.
My final advice. Just say no. It's simple and it's easy. Don't
use these kinds of programs and don't purchase from companies
who use them. This is the only way that we will force this kind
of scum out of business.
Additional Information
Ad Blocking http://www.internet-tips.net/Security/adblocking.htm
Banner ads are everywhere, and they take up valuable bandwidth.
In addition, they are ugly and distracting. Here's how to remove
them.
Browser Helper Objects
http://www.internet-tips.net/Browsers/bho.htm Is your system
crashing? Perhaps you've unknowingly done what I did - added a
Browser Helper Object.
Products - Ad-Aware
http://www.internet-tips.net/Products/adaware.htm Want to remove
spyware from your system? Ad-Aware is a quick and simple product
which will help you do that safely.
Products - AdSubtract Pro
http://www.internet-tips.net/Products/adsubtract.htm You want to
eliminate banner ads and web bugs? AdSubtract Pro does an
excellent job.
Products - Cookie Pal
http://www.internet-tips.net/Products/cookiepal.htm Need to
manage cookies as you surf the internet? Then you will not find
a better program than Cookie Pal.
Tanstaaf - Spyware
http://www.internet-tips.net/Tanstaafl/spyware.htm Be careful
installing ad supported products - you may find that you every
move on the internet is being watched!
Tanstaafl - Spyware - Alexa
http://www.internet-tips.net/Tanstaafl/spyware_alexa.htm Alexa
is one of the more flagrant spyware products. My advice is to
avoid it like the plague.
Tanstaafl - Juno http://www.internet-tips.net/Tanstaafl
anstaafl_juno.htm Juno wants to turn your computer into a module
of it's own supercomputer. Do you really want to let them?
Web Bugs http://www.internet-tips.net/Security/webbugs.htm Web
bugs are little graphic images inserted into web pages, emails
and other web-aware documents to allow companies to gather
information about you without your knowledge.
Web Bugs Are Crawling Everywhere
http://www.internet-tips.net/Security/webbugs_growing.htm You've
heard about web bugs. They are little things designed to track
your movements. Watch out - they are exploding all over the
internet.