GreenguyandJim Fighting Zango
 

~Fighting Zango ~

With all the talk about Zango these past few weeks, I think the best offense is a great defence. And to me, education of the surfer is the key.

I have come up with a page that both will scare the surfer and explain how to get rid of this software. I also have an htaccess file that will detect Zango users and redirect them to this page.

I need to let you know that this page is only way to help the surfers clean their PCs. There are not nor will there ever be any ads on this page. And, it will always be there for your surfers. You really have nothing to lose...you won't make any money from these surfers anyway.

Here is the url for the page I created...
http://www.adwaresucks.com/zango/

And the htaccess file can be found here...
http://www.adwaresucks.com/zango/zangohtaccess.txt

You may use this if you would like. We have tested it and it appears to be working very well.

As more of these adware/spyware products surface that will take money from webmasters and programs alike, I will make a new directory, page and htaccess file.

I hope all of this helps.
Jim

Is that htaccess a seperate line under what I already have in place or is some of it to be slipped in along with what's already there?

I put it 1 space under what I already had in there & it seems to be working fine.

Thanks Greenie, just put that on all my LL domains. Sucks they we have to do that to keep them from stealing traffic.

After looking at the stats with Greenie, we calculated that he had about .15% of his traffic sent to the page over about a 24 hour period.

So, out of 2000 people going to link-o-rama, 3 were infected with zango.

While some people are afraid to lose anyone from their site, the percentage is tiny. And as I said in a previous thread, if these 3 people out of the 2000 grouping remained on link-o-rama, they would have had a zango popup show up and would have blamed Greenie, not zango. If these were loyal bookmarkers, he most likely would have lost them.

nice job |thumb
I hope it will make a difference if enough of us use it

I have the htaccess code added on xratedtv now and I'll be adding it to our other feeder domains this week.

I kind of doubt that most Windows users are comfortable doing the things the "infected" page tells them they need to do. And some won't do it based on it being a porn site that tells them to do it (LOR and others with loyal surfers being the exceptions).

My guess is a good percentage will bail when they read what they need to do, and just go hunt some porn. But I think Ponygirl's point is right. If that surfer sees it happen to him again and again on enough sites he'd like to visit, it may make the difference.

So we really do need to get this message out to a lot of webmasters if we want it to have a marked effect. The adwaresucks domain certainly is fine for mainstream sites to use the message there too.

We are actually working on some other things right now. There is another nasty piece of software coming down the road that makes zango look like a walk in the park.

We are coming up with a new htaccess code that will allow surfers to just go back to your site without being sent back to the page.

We are talking about quite a few things that will help all of us.

Even if they ignore it, at least we tried :)

Posted it at the askdamagex board as quotation from the newsletter :)
Link can be found here, big tgp owners also have a lot to lose if they don't fight them...
http://www.askdamagex.com/showthread...116#post101116

All this technical stuff, I wish I knew more.

So if I want to add the. htaccess file to my domain, just copy the text Greenie provided and add it to my existing file?

Is that it?

I believe this is now the main thread so I will post on this one.

Should the following line: "Zango is attempting to monitor user activities on your computer. If allowed it may try to track or log keystrokes (user input), mouse movements/clicks, Web sites visited, and other user behaviors." be set in a different color than black. This is the selling point of the page to me and a bolder color would help draw attention of the surfer to it visually as well. Since most people only do quick scans.

Just a thought. :)

Hold Off On Everything!

Sparky is working on a little customizable interface for this - we should have a better version in time for the Radio Show.

What about spybot?

Does that remove Zango?

Zango *is* in the list of items that SpyBot detects.

Ok then why not just inform the surfer that spyware has been detected on their computer and have them download spybot?

Since spybot regularly updates and will remove the other big parasites as well.

That way you don't have to worry about instructing the surfer on how to remove adware manually

The problem (aside from the fact that it'd look like we were trying to make money off some removal program) is that all the removal programs Jim looked into also removed a lot of other things, like cookies (buh-bye CCBill transactions) so as of right now, the best thing we can think of is to tell people how to remove it by hand.

But Jim is working on finding a program that will just remove Zango (and any others that we come across) without getting rid of everything else that the removal programs deem "issues"

Well, we have something. It's not pretty but it does do the job.
It will now allow your own css file, will return surfers that don't uninstall zango and even builds you your own htaccess file.
http://adwaresucks.com/webmasters/

I just want you guys to be on the cutting edge. It will be pretty within a day or two.

Well done Greenie and Jim...and Sparky too of course |thumb

It's great to see we are fighting this menace. For years they are stealing sales from us, it's time to act.

Excellent stuff!!!

giving credits where its due would be nice
http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=667179

Good work chaps :)

darksoul
If I saw that, I probably would have asked you to work together with us. Good Job. But, I really don't go to GFY very often. I went there yesterday because I saw someone on a different board copied a post from GFY with my name in it. Otherwise, you might see me there twice/month when I get bored.

As I told everyone yesterday, steal our page and do what you want with it. The important thing is to get the word out.

I am almost positive that you didn't hear our radio show last night but we are turning adwaresucks.com into a scumware fighting machine. We are setting it up to read a pc to check for any scumware and will redirect to the proper instructions no matter what they have installed. The nearest count is 450 of these programs running right now. And some of them using cookie stuffing that makes zango look like nothing.

I just read your thread and I noticed that your page was not welcomed with open arms. I think you and I are on the same page. Informing the surfer about any of these programs is key in fighting it.

I see that you are sending people away from your page to software that is going to remove cookies as well as zanga. You probably should rethink that...without cookies, you have no ccbill sales.

Anyway, nice work and if you have any ideas for adwaresucks, let me know.

Oh yeah, I see Lars said it was about .5 percent of surfers with zango. We will have real numbers later today. But, we have seen sites with up to 4 percent infected. But, that was Lars, he seems to be fighting for the other side.

Reading Lars' latest promotional thread on GFY, and the seemingly (unseemly) unanimous roars of approval, you'd be hard pressed to imagine that there were sides.

Jim,
I think the coincidence is a bit too big!
plus you modifyed that .htaccess so badly that you even broke it
this means that users with no referrers won't be redirected
if they have ZangoToolbar. Why would you want that ?

yourdomain.com\.com(:[0-9]+)? makes no sense either because in mod_rewrite language it means:
"the url might be of the form yourdomain.com:135" or any other group of digits
Is that a new tld extension ?

Using stuff like (.*@)?([a-z0-9-]+\.)* is overkill when you can simply use (.*)? which will match anything.

Also please note that the javascript history.go(-1)
won't set the referer to adwaresucks.com making
useless and the user will be caught into a loop and wont be able to go back to the originating site.

I can't address the code since I didn't write it but I'm sure when the person that did will correct you...or not.

As far as the coincidence, that would be exactly what it is. If you knew me at all you would know that the last place I go is gfy. I would much rather take care of business than to look at Lindsey Lohan's latest nip slips. Our pages look nothing alike. Or are you talking about the idea? I'm sure you and I are not the first to come up with a redirect for people using a scumware program. As a matter of fact, I saw a mainstream site that started doing it in 2003 yesterday.

But go ahead...question my honesty again.

Waiting for that.

I'm not talking about the page. But about the idea.
Notice, I didn't have anything against making your own page
and using that stuff. I don't care, I put the solution there to be used.
But if the thing is indeed taken from there and pretend to be your own solution that would majorly suck, don't you think ?

I agree that it would suck...
And perhaps if you had posted it on a webmaster only board, you might have some type of claim. The fact alone that I only surf webmaster/surfer boards when greenguyandjim is mentioned should be enough. And most times with most people, my word is good enough.

But, if you look at this thread...about post number 19
http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=35453
you will see my thought process. It would have been a lot easier if I did see your post. :) I even had to ask our guy what htaccess file I should use. Again, if I saw your post, I wouldn't have had to do that.

All in all, the idea has been around since at least 2003. I have read so much in the past few days about zango so I can't point you to the page I am talking about. (Please take my word for it) But, I suppose that person can come out and say we both stole his idea. And yet, I saw it yesterday and you probably haven't seen it at all.

Truthfully, I didn't see your post. As I said, if I did, I would have asked you to be involved in somthing that is going to be much bigger than just zango. We are basically on the same page with this thing.

There is a ton of work to be done. If you would like to help us, that would be great.

But please, don't question my honesty or integrity. Call me a piece of shit, asshole...etc. But, I have been in this business for over 10 years. And nobody ever questions my honesty. This is why so many people are using adwaresucks.com. Webmasters know I am never going to do anything to hurt them.

After being told it's not a good idea everytime this year, I'm glad a few of you have taken your coding knowledge and got pro-active to do something with it.

I will be using it on my sites for sure. Thanks

Just a question: can you show me where you gave SmokeyTheBear credit for the idea, since he posted this: http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=665894 - on October 13th 4 days before you posted yours?

Or maybe you didn't see that thread? Sorta like Jim didn't see that one or your thread or any of the other threads that you can find by throwing some words into Google?

I really don't see the connection.
Can you point me to where he remotely mentions anything
about the User Agent Zango uses ?

Did you even read what that code does ?
let me quote it for you:

btw, this post pretty much proves my point.

Its like: "Yes I stole it, but look so did you, so I'm ok to do that"

peace

Ok - you got me :) I'm not a tech guy - I just threw "zango htaccess redirect" into google, saw that thread come up, saw that it had coding on it that I have no idea what it does, saw the date.....

My bad. I apologize.

It doesn't matter Greenie. You know, Sparky knows and anyone I talked to about this knows that I never saw his post. Hell, anyone that knows me knows I didn't see his post. I don't want this to cloud what we are trying to do.

But please darksole, change your page to not send people to anti-adware software. Unless you found a free one that leaves cookies alone. And if you did, please share.

That's not what I was trying to say! My point (which is moot now) was that if there is another thread or page ANYWHERE on the internet that's dated prior to yours on how to redirect zango surfers - and assuming that you did not read it yourself - would you too be considered a thief?

Heres the right code to use
on your Zango page:

I didn't said you did. When I initially posted, I was talking with the
thread poster but you popped out beeing defensive.

My page is a Proof of Concept, everyone should do his own page

If I'd use something I didn't do, I'd make sure I don't get credits for it.
This thing is hardly something to call someone a thief for, I put it there
for everyone to use. But I think its common courtesy to give credits where its due.