GreenguyandJim Fighting Zango

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by eman

...The makers Greenguy and Jim did not return a request for comment.

DAMN SPAN FOLDERS! Not to worry, I know Jim will have a comment for them tomorrow

Originally Posted by eman

...Zango spokesperson Steve Stratz called the Zango Warning site "blatant lies and scare tactics", and provided vnunet.com with a copy of an ad that the company will soon be running.

The ad, which is set to appear every time a user is re-directed to the Zango Warning site, tells the user "The Web page in question is designed to 'scare the surfer', as its 'creator' has confessed...

I've already come up with a possible solution - assuming they are detecting it based on the domain adwaresucks.com (how else would they be detecting it?) all you really have to do is put it on a different domain.

Each of us is going to have to host it on our own domains. And yes, they'll eventually get a list of domains that are doing it together & pop-up the anti-ad every time a user goes to those domains, but they won't get every domain if everyone uses a different one

Yes, this will take time on our parts & yes, it does seem like work you've already done, but think of the workload they'll have surfing around to all our sites seeing if the ad pops up

[virgohippy]

How about a speedy redirect with htaccess that's set to point to one of many recently designated "info" pages?

Kind of a shame this is turning into a pissing match. As they adapt, we're forced to do so. Seems to me fighting with these people with code, and web tricks seems like a battle of wasted efforts. We need to fight them on a level on which they can't easily compete.

Find something in their documentation and harass them legally through the judicial system... maybe even a class action lawsuit for stolen revenues?

[tickler]

Originally Posted by Greenie

I've already come up with a possible solution - assuming they are detecting it based on the domain adwaresucks.com (how else would they be detecting it?) all you really have to do is put it on a different domain.

Each of us is going to have to host it on our own domains. And yes, they'll eventually get a list of domains that are doing it together & pop-up the anti-ad every time a user goes to those domains, but they won't get every domain if everyone uses a different one

Yes, this will take time on our parts & yes, it does seem like work you've already done, but think of the workload they'll have surfing around to all our sites seeing if the ad pops up

you have a PM with some code to look at! Figured I would let you take a look before I posted it.

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by eman

...Zango spokesperson Steve Stratz called the Zango Warning site "blatant lies and scare tactics", and provided vnunet.com with a copy of an ad that the company will soon be running.

The ad, which is set to appear every time a user is re-directed to the Zango Warning site, tells the user "The Web page in question is designed to 'scare the surfer', as its 'creator' has confessed...

OH! I thought of another possible solution for this - on the adwaresucks.com page, where they will be popping up the anti-ad, we can add some text along the lines of: "The pop-up you just saw is proof that Zango is tracking where you are surfing - how else would they know that you were on the our website? Please read......"

[eman]

These zango people are slippery bastards (:

[Jim]

Holy Shit..I was never asked for a comment about what any zango spokesman said. Maybe Sparky can come up with some way to stop their warning from blocking our warning I do have to wonder, what lies did I say in the warning? I quoted Zone Alarm and I said that what zango was doing was not illegal since the user agreed to it in their terms and conditions. Maybe that was the lie

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by Jim

Holy Shit..I was never asked for a comment about what any zango spokesman said....

Sparky looked thru the log files last night & no email from vnunet.com came thru the servers in the last 2 weeks.

I think you need to write them a strongly worded letter!

[Jim]

Oh yeah...I have a funny story, speaking of zango. Saturday, my daughter brought over her laptop because she has been running without any virus protection. So, I go and search for Pccillan..I forgot the domain. I find it and go to the site. I am about to click on buy and a window pops up with another buy in it. So, I start to move my mouse to it to click and then look at the bottom of the browser. "Browser brought to you by Zango"

[monro]

Originally Posted by Jim

Oh yeah...I have a funny story, speaking of zango. Saturday, my daughter brought over her laptop because she has been running without any virus protection. So, I go and search for Pccillan..I forgot the domain. I find it and go to the site. I am about to click on buy and a window pops up with another buy in it. So, I start to move my mouse to it to click and then look at the bottom of the browser. "Browser brought to you by Zango"

How does Google and other search engines react to this? As you describe it above it is pure theft! And misleading the search results provided.
-----------
Last 24 hours the amount of Zango infected users redirected by my .htaccess have gone down 50%. Has Zango found a way around the script already you think?
It is "ZangoToolbar" in: RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ZangoToolbar [NC] i am worried about.
If they change "ZangoToolbar" is it free way for the thieves again?

[jayeff]

Originally Posted by monro

How does Google and other search engines react to this?

I suspect right now that Google & Co are more concerned with click "arbitrage": which is when you locate keywords which are cheaper on Google (for example) than somewhere else (say Adsense), buy them on Google and then redirect visitors to an Adsense landing page, instead of the content they imagined they would reach.

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/07/...ty-update.html

It's good to see a variety of ways emerging with which to combat Zango. I just hope people don't lose sight of the reality that Zango is only one scumware company out of many and that most of the solutions to date don't offer a way to recover the income we potentially lose to scumware, because the infected surfer still cannot reach the targets we intend him to reach.

We should protect our sites to the maximum extent possible, but we also have to increase the pressure on our industry to adopt professional standards. The scumware issue surely illustrates that "ethics" is not just an abstract concept which must always play second fiddle to making money. By definition, scumware only allows a small number of people to profit while everyone else is effectively mugged and the whole of the estimated $20 billion a year which the scumware providers make is being scrubbed off affiliate and sponsor profits, because they do not create sales, only divert them.

[tickler]

Originally Posted by jayeff

.....small number of people to profit while everyone else is effectively mugged and the whole of the estimated $20 billion a year which the scumware providers make is being scrubbed off affiliate and sponsor profits, because they do not create sales, only divert them.

Since 99.9% of the internet is advertising driven, how long before affiliate programs start collapsing. Advertisers wrongly paying out on type-ins, affilates sales getting ripped off, search engines getting mugged on PPC revenues.

How many people are going to create, and filter traffic if there is no money to made? Time, content, bandwidth, hosting all cost $$$s.

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by monro

...Has Zango found a way around the script already you think?
It is "ZangoToolbar" in: RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ZangoToolbar [NC] i am worried about.
If they change "ZangoToolbar" is it free way for the thieves again?

I just asked Sparky if he knew of a way for them to change the user agent on existing installs.

And if they do, we'll just have to change some things & look into building a better system

[Senator_x]

I would like to collect stats on my server to see how many surfers are infected with ZANGO. There must be an easy way.

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by Senator_x

I would like to collect stats on my server to see how many surfers are infected with ZANGO. There must be an easy way.

You could use the htaccess code that we have, redirect it to a copy of your main page on your server & see how many people have it by watching the stats for the mirror page.

[Senator_x]

Originally Posted by Greenie

You could use the htaccess code that we have, redirect it to a copy of your main page on your server & see how many people have it by watching the stats for the mirror page.

That was easy.

Thank you

[Jim]

I really hope that when we see what they have done, Sparky will come up with an answer for us. Like I just told Greenie, they could have something as easy as if the word zango is on a page, they popup the window calling me a lier using scare tactics. Since they have included themselves on their exclusion list, they really don't want to use their browser when zango is mentioned anyway. I think we have to fight this with software and not just moving it. But, if we could pop somethig on top of their popup like Greenie mentioned that might work as well.

[Jim]

Oh yeah, anyone redirecting to the adwaresucks page...if you would like to know how many surfers you have sent, just ask me and I will let you know.

[Jim]

Originally Posted by Jim

Oh yeah, anyone redirecting to the adwaresucks page...if you would like to know how many surfers you have sent, just ask me and I will let you know.

I forgot that since we are sending traffic using an htaccess file, I am only able to see the sites that send traffic to you. The numbers are crazy. So far for the month of November, that page has gotten 153434 visits.

[tickler]

Hey Jim, you could always put an looping auto-focus on your page to bring it to the top. Even if they do the same it will drive the surfers nuts with the page flipping.

Originally Posted by virgohippy

Find something in their documentation and harass them legally through the judicial system... maybe even a class action lawsuit for stolen revenues?

Well here the details direct from MetricsDirect(Zango) page on how they deliver ads.
http://www.metricsdirect.com/whatwed...ngyourads.aspx
"a woman types in “women’s discount shoes” on Google. Google delivers a page with its usual list of search results and sponsored listings. Zango delivers a new browser window above this listing, displaying the advertiser’s landing web page."

[[BV]]

I have run across a couple neat tools to combat Zango on other boards.

Is it ok to link to threads on other boards?

One is a one click zango removal tool and the other is some code that can be placed on the page to prevent Zango from popping an add.

[Greenguy]

BV - post away!

[Greenguy]

Thanks tickler

[cd34]

While I am reasonably sure that Zango has the programming capabilities to do an auto-update, I wonder what the long term effect is. Its possible that new generations have a different identifier and older generations still bear the Zango tag.

Here's the cynical view I see of Zango.

Affiliates push a sponsor, Zango skims that sponsor and takes a % for themselves. Affiliate leaves sponsor because conversions suck. Zango no longer has anything to skim.

The long term model only works when Zango (or any scumware vendor) is able to skim traffic filtered enough to go to paying locations. It doesn't make sense for zango to pop an advertisement for Hawaiian Air when someone is surfing a site on pet adoption. Which means that they need to do context sniffing to present reasonable ads. Right now, they can target simple URL strings which doesn't require much computing power or intelligence.

If everyone knew that SponsorA was buying clicks to advertise above SponsorB, and everyone stopped advertising SponsorB because of lower conversions, it seems that somewhere along the line, SponsorA, Zango, SponsorB and the affiliate lose out.

A sponsor that is being Zangoed, sees the same number of signups, the same relative payout -- just that the distribution to the affiliates has changed.

The problem I have with most of the tried and true detection systems is that to detect scumware, you almost have to be scumware. As for zango displaying a message on top of adwaresucks.com, it just shows that they are scared that people might learn what has been installed on their machines.

[tickler]

Originally Posted by cd34

A sponsor that is being Zangoed, sees the same number of signups, the same relative payout -- just that the distribution to the affiliates has changed.

The sponsor may also end up doing payouts on typein traffic. So much for viral marketing, or URL stamping as discussed in another thread.

[[BV]]

Zango is not the real problem, the retards that buy traffic from them are.

Dealing in stolen merchandise.

If no one bought traffic from Zango then they would have to send traffic to sponsors themselves. Maybe they do that now, i don't know. If that was the case I (sponsor) would kill their account.

I've canned a few accounts when I don't like what I see.

If every sponsor did that, think how much better it would be.

When you see an affiliate doing something you don't like, can their ass!

This is the only way we can solve the problem because today it's Zango, tomorrow will be someone else, and so on.

~BV