I'm fighting a losing battle. The latest and meanest spyware programs have started to show signs of a serious outbreak that could quite possibly add up to more production loss then virus infection alone. Twice in the last few weeks I've encountered two separate computers that were infected with variants of the CoolWebSearch trojan, one being my own (as I mentioned previously) and another at my office!

Computers across the internet are quietly being infected through exploits in internet explorer, outlook and windows and the Anti-Virus companies have sat by and done nothing. They've done nothing because its a gray area in many respects-- some spyware you get when you install a free program and removing that spyware would be going against the terms of service of that program, hence antivirus companies would be exposing themselves to some liability if they began removing spyware or blocking spyware for you. But then there are the machines like mine where spyware snuck in while I simply browsed some webpage or viewed an email in outlook with embedded html. It was probably not even from the webpage I was viewing but instead embedded in some advertisement inside of that webpage, unbeknownst to the webmaster and probably unbeknownst to the advertising network. The same rogues who abuse email systems and send out spam are abusing existing affiliate marketing platforms to make a quick buck with adware/spyware.

Affiliate marketing, ultimately, is the catalyst for all of this-- I'm willing to bet that you can chart the rise of spam against the rise of affiliate marketing programs and their efficiency at which they can sign people on as affiliates. In case you haven't heard of Affiliate marketing, let me break it down for you:

I, Walter's Weblog, sell widgets. Now, I could spend a lot of time trying to run ad campaigns that include bulk email, google ads, search engine optimization to get my pages highly ranked, banner ads, etc... OR.. I could concentrate on SELLING the widgets and instead rely on AFFILIATE MARKETING to solve my marketing problem for me. How? Well all I do is whip up a simple interface that lets people sign up with say, a paypal account or something, and I issue them a unique ID. For every hit that comes to my website with that unique ID stamped on it I will pay that person oh say... a tenth of a cent or something. And for every SALE that hit brings I'll cut em a percentage of that sale.

Thats affiliate marketing.. and you can see the potential for abuse there. Turnkey affiliate marketing systems are a dime a dozen and theres an entire subindustry built around running affiliate marketing programs for e-commerce sites. Most of this stuff was developed in the adult porn site realm, as are many other web "innovations" despite what you may have heard :).

Annnnnnyywayysss, spam, adware, popups and spyware were basically created by affiliate marketers in order to make a quick buck! Its so farking simple its pathetic, nearly every tool you need to do this can be googled in an instant-- bulk mailers, affiliate websites to sign up for and get ID#s for to spam with, email lists to send emails to, etc. You hit a million email addresses, get that .0001% signed up and you've just made $1000! (assuming a $20 sign up fee and 50% payout to affiliates as described in the article, atleast for adult sites). But with ADWARE you sneak a program on to someones computer and instead of hoping that they open your spam you suddenly blast their computer screen with it! This brings up the # of people who click and signup significantly enough to make this type of illegal and sleazy marketing worth it apparently, and as technology advances on their side things are only going to get worse. I think you can also chart the increase in adware against the increased use of advanced spam filters as well-- more and more spammers are just turning to adware. While virus writers tend to be young men who do it for nerdy or geeky reasons, these guys have serious monetary gains to make and when/if Norton/Mcafee start rolling out serious anti-adware/spyware programs the other side will only escalate things with more complex and nasty adware. The problem with adware is that were not dealing with your typical virus writer, a single person who does it for technical prowess/bragging rights, instead we've got something much more serious:

Organized Crime baby. Yep, this is their new bag and they are rolling in the dough! When they get involved all bets are off, because they will bribe, cheat and kill their way until they've got what they want. Scary stuff. Now, certainly, affiliate marketing programs are aware of the spammers and the scammers, but while they say "OMG WE BANZOR PPL WHO SPAM", in reality they are making money too and their is little incentive for them to punish their affiliates, and even when they do its rarely the case that the violator affiliate can't just signup and create a new account all over again. Or worse, the mafia won't LET them ban the 'rogue affiliate'.

And while spam has just NOW finally gotten the attention of the nation and things are barely starting to roll on actually doing something about it, the yelling and screaming about adware/spyware has only just begun. My fear is that by the time Microsoft readies XP SP2 (which will supposedly finally secure windows from this kind of stuff, hah yeah right), and any laws with TEETH get passed, it will be too late and EVERYONE will be forced to do what I'm faced with doing--

FORMAT C:

And now headlines:

People will do anything for a GMAIL account apparently

You thought if you didn't use Windows you were safe? Think again!

Huh, Cuecat 2.0 who woulda thought? Guess the original was just ahead of its time? :P

More Iraqi prisoner abuse photos. These soldiers in the pictures smiling and pointing are fucked up, seriously.

Ahh well. I may not have to format after all, might just install a parallel copy of XP and kinda start over with that, NOT USING INTERNET EXPLORER or IE based web browsers like my favorite fallen hero Avant Browser and also employing programs like SpywareBlaster to keep spyware off my computer for good in the first place. Longhorn can't come sooner.

Current Mood: Sleepy time!
Current Music: Chromatique - Numbers

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