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Thiefware/Scumware - Who's Stealing Your Web Traffic?
by Dyanna Culp (Temos)
The sole function of thief, or scumware, is to steal Web traffic and redirect it to paid advertisers' Web sites. You cannot stop traffic thieves by modifying your Meta tags, more sophisticated code is required, and Gator is impossible to stop. Thiefware bombards surfers with pop ups, banners, and hypertext links taking them off to scumware advertiser sites. For example, you're browsing a site's computer game options and click on an appealing text link. At that moment your browser is kidnapped and off you go to a scumware Web site. Any Web site can purchase any terms they like from the Thief/Scumware companies. It's a very attractive proposition for Web sites struggling to make a living... just "steal" the competition's traffic. But, the Web is fighting back with sites devoted to Thief/Scumware, where scumware advertisers find themselves on a quick road to Web site black lists, and many large corporations have filed lawsuits against the traffic bandits.
Scumware, also known as Thiefware Programs, are sophisticated unethical software viruses and Trojan horses. Hidden within popular downloads, such as music sharing programs and online shopping tools, multi-millions have unknowingly infected their computers with hard to remove programs, which take over their Internet browser, and actually alter viewed Web sites. The results are pop-ups, banners, and hyperlinks inserted into Web pages that take you away to a paid scumware advertiser. It's the equivalent of developing a glossy high-dollar magazine campaign, paying for the insert, and then having a large majority of the readers flip to your page and see a competitor's ad - who paid out peanuts compared to your investment.
Scumware are invisible programs running on the user's system. They don't show up as cookies. They take up residence deep within the operating system. The pop-ups, banners, and ugly yellow/green links all over your Web pages appear to be your content, to the unsuspecting site visitor. In reality they are streaming from resident scum programs on the viewer's computer. Free prevention code and removal programs exist for Web designers and Internet users, but Scum programmers constantly update software to get around the efforts to stop them. There is no code protection from some systems, such as the notorious Gator.
Online activism and black lists convince many Thiefware advertisers to drop their traffic-stealing ways. Type in thiefware or scumware on Google, and dozens of fighting back watchdog/blacklist sites appear.
They educate surfers, "If you've arrived at some merchant's Web site that is willing to do business in this unethical manner, do you really want to pull out your credit card and give him the number?"
Provide free Web code and programs for removing system scumware.
Send out mass e-mail to scum-paying advertisers regarding their blacklist position. Need to add an advertiser to the spam/scumware database? Fill out the form, at: www.scumware.com/advertisers/add.html to add a Web site to the "black list."
Scumware / Thiefware legal action will most likely involve these areas of the law:
Copyright / Trademark infringement:
Viewers are deceived into thinking the Web site publisher has included the links/ banners/ pop-ups, and thus endorses them. "My feeling is that these pop-up-unders/ overs/ whatevers are a trademark, an unfair competition problem, rather than strictly a copyright problem. (data.preti.com) Alfred Frawley , an IP attorney.
Misappropriation. The companies producing the thiefware programs profit from the unauthorized commercial use of other's property.
Interference with business relationships. In the case of Gator (which superimposes its advertiser's banners over paid legitimate original banners), Web site owners may make find it difficult to sell advertising.
Violation of advertising laws and unfair competition.
Over 800 shareware - freeware downloads include additional thiefware components. The information below is for the major players among the cockroaches online.
THE TOP SCUMWARE PLAYERS
EZULA Top Text Program - (www.ezula.com) -
A virus-like collection of programs that act as a Trojan horse and install SpyWare on systems when several popular programs are downloaded. This allows Ezula paid advertisers (bidding on pay-per-click search terms) to "hack' into other competitors' sites. Key advertiser terms are highlighted in yellow, and hyperlinked to the paid advertiser's site. For example, someone with this program is on nytimes.com, an eZula advertiser has bought the word "classifieds" and "personals." Every instance of these words would show as bold yellow, and clicking on it would take customers away from nytimes.com to the competition site. For the moment, TopText works only with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, but the majority of Web users use it.
KaZaa (www.kazaa.com/us/index.php) is probably the most used Ezula program. It is the #1 replacement for the popular Napster music download program, and downloaded over ten million times just from the Cnet download site alone. Another popular Ezula scum download is ClickTillUWin.
FileMix SURF+ or Easy Link - (www.filemix.net) -
A Trojan horse browser virus, typically associated with MP3 music sharing program downloads. A large red SURF appears at the top of the browser when installed. It turns words on Web pages into green underlined links leading to scum advertisers' Web sites, many of which sell adult related content and products. The ScumWare program allows them to make changes to every Web page you visit, turning plain text words into links in order to hijack you from the site you are at, and deliver you to the paying Web site.
Spedia - (www.spedia.net) - is the "media" company ad sales arm of the Surf+ system. They arrange deals with Pay-Per-Click engines usually by misrepresenting the nature of their stolen traffic. The PPC engine Ah-ha.com is one of the few legitimate engines still doing business with them.
iMesh - (www.imesh.com) -
Another Trojan horse browser virus program- napster knock-off for music downloading and file sharing.
GATOR (www.gator.com) -
Gator inserts banners which replace legitimate paid banners on a Web page. They completely cover and hide many paid banners on Yahoo and AOL. Gator software also has access to most user's credit card information if stored on the desktop computer. The Internet Advertising Bureau says Gator's practice of covering a site's ads with Gator client ads illegally interferes with the contractual relationship between a site and its advertisers. Gator has countered with a declarative-relief civil suit against IAB, claiming its practices are lawful. Gator is currently being sued by The Washington Post, The New York Times, L.L. Bean, Dow Jones and seven other companies alleging that Gator ads violate their copyrights and steal their revenue. In October 2002, the UPS also filed a lawsuit charging Gator with delivering unauthorized ads to visitors at its Web site.
Gator is selling ads designed to block banners on sites such as Yahoo, with pop-ups of the exact same dimensions, completely obscuring the original ad. The pop-ups hover over the banners even when the visitor scrolls down the page, making it even more difficult to discern that the visible ad is a substitute. (ZDNet.com/zdnn/stories)
Save Now from WhenU.com (www.whenu.com) -
Trojan horse pop-up ads, which target Web sites that are members of affiliate programs. You can view a list of current Save Now advertisers at www.thiefware.com/whenu/whenu.list.htm.
Web site code sources for Scumware protection:
There are currently no scripts to disable Gator from stealing your Web traffic. The following work on eZula and other text link programs.
Link Thief Killer
"...a small piece of Jscript which will totally disables Surf+ links, and allows you to redirect Ezula links to a page of your choice.
TrafficG
Two different link-killer scripts. The first script captures the entire Web page, cleans the source code of unwanted links, and then rewrites the html code back to the browser. This version is easy to install but does not work for pages with banners or large amounts of graphics. The second version is a bit more complicated, and can be targeted to clean up one or more specific areas of a Web page.
Rid Text Disabler
This NEW script actually goes into eZula's TopText code and rewrites the eZula tags so they no longer work. The RidText disabler directly attacks the code responsible for putting out the links. So this script removes the need to refresh Web pages before disabling eZula.
CSS Disabler
An equally effective method at stopping TopText links from showing up on your pages. It uses cascade style sheet tags to take control before TopText takes over the page. This is a very simple way of defeating TopText.
Deleting Scumware/ Thiefware from a Computer System
The majority of these programs cannot be deleted from your system by normal methods, and leave residual components behind to continue to monitor your behavior and try to reinstall themselves. Having javascript enabled for Web browsing (even on medium security) allows them to sneak into a system. The most reliable program for removing scumware from computers can be downloaded at www.lavasoftusa.com. I frequently run their Ad-aware and find snippets of undesirable programs, even though I never download files and use a firewall.
In conclusion, you may be thinking to yourself I might find these programs useful. BUT keep in mind you would almost certainly find yourself on Internet Web site black lists, and being contacted by one of the many law firms now specializing in filing Internet lawsuits.
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