GreenguyandJim Fighting 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.
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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