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May 29, 2004

Misperceptions of Adware

A lot of people think adware is installed with the computer user's consent, even if that consent is gained through trickery. For example, I was reading a blog entry by Angela Hoy on the topic of dirty marketing practises -- seemingly about another topic altogether -- when I noticed the following passage (emphesis mine):

We were once contacted by a Booklocker.com author who was furious that "Booklocker.com kept inserting ads for one of its competitors" whenever he tried to view our site. He was trying to sell his book through Booklocker.com, yet was furious because he thought we were allowing a competitor to pay to advertise on our site, thus diverting traffic away from our authors. It took a few emails before he finally understood that he'd allowed another company to place adware on his computer, thus allowing pop-ups for that competitor to appear on his own computer whenever he accessed Booklocker.com. Placing adware on someone's computer and obtaining their "consent" without their knowledge is dirty marketing.

By saying "he'd allowed another company to place adware on his computer," Ms. Hoy places the blame on the person who is being victimized: the user did not necessarily do anything to "consent" to having this garbage put on his machine, nothing active at least. I consider myself to be fairly savvy to the world of spam and internet garbage, and I have to clear adware off my machine on a regular basis. And I can assure you that I have never clicked on a pseudo-error popup, or clicked on a link without looking at where it's going.

I find this attitude towards the victims of Microsoft's negligent approach to security puzzling. A relatively simple web search would tell you that adware can be installed without consent of any sort. Trickery is not required. While it's true that the fellow in question was out of order to accuse Booklocker of inserting popups before checking his system for adware, doubling the offense doesn't make it any better.

I've had success with keeping adware to a minimum by taking the following steps:

1. Removing all instant messaging software -- this was the most recent and the most effective step; since I uninstalled Yahoo IM, I've been adware-free for longer than ever before, and that has made me unbelievably angry at Yahoo
2. HiJack This and regedit are my friends
3. Spybot Search and Destroy

Posted by ayse on 05/29/04 at 11:28 PM