Month: July 2005

A bunch of Sunbelters are going to the Microsoft Worldwide Partner conference this week.  If you’re there, feel free to drop on by to hang out and get a t-shirt.

 

Hacked.  Register story here.  What the hack looked like here.

From beSpacific, the FTC has released the US SAFE WEB Act, a legislative recommendation for Congress.

It’s apparently focused on giving the FTC the power to go after cross-border spam, spyware and fraud.

A hypothetical case of how the Act might help the FTC in combating spyware here.

A summary of the Act here.

A spiffy marketing briefing here.

Draft of the Act itself here

And some more explanations here.

Alex Eckelberry

 

Everyone, according to this Security Focus article.

(Thanks to techdirt).

 

(Thanks Eric Howes at SpywareWarrior for the image)

UPDATE: While the news has been that Microsoft downgraded the Claria listing, we have reports now that there are a number of other items that have been downgraded to “Ignore” status, including certain WhenU adware programs, WebHancer and Ezula Toptext. So the Claria downgrade is quite likely part of a bigger picture regarding Microsoft’s listing criteria for adware. Click here.

A post on BroadBand reports by Eric Howes is reporting that a number of Claria programs are set to a default action of “Ignore” in Microsoft Antispyware.

What this means is that while Microsoft Antispyware will still find Claria adware, in most cases, it will have a recommended action of “Ignore” (versus “Quarantine” or “Remove”). I’m not talking cookies, I’m talking the actual adware programs.

As many know, we get antispyware database updates from Microsoft as part of a prior arrangement. So we did a brief check of our database updates from Microsoft, and found the change to “Ignore” occurred on March 31. (We continue to list Claria in our own database with a default action of “Quarantine” as we don’t bother to use the Microsoft threat treatments, only the actual threat data, such as MD5 hashes, file names, etc.)

Note that Hotbar is in their database but is set to “Quarantine”.

At any rate, does this mean that Claria will, in fact, be purchased by Microsoft? Not necessarily. It could mean, however, that the two companies are working together in some other capacity, or that Claria has successfully lobbied Microsoft to change the default action. Or, it’s a simple oversight.

Alex Eckelberry
President

From News.com: “A patch for the flaw is not available. As an interim measure, the software giant advises people to set their Internet and local intranet security zone settings to “high” before running ActiveX controls.

 

From BeSpacific, Deloitte just released their 2005 Global Security Survey on financial institutions.

 

 

Direct Revenue Appoints Andrew Reiskind Chief Privacy Officer.

Reisking previously worked for Weil, Gotshal & Manges and most recently he was with interactive marketing firm Modem Media.

He has his work cut out for him.  As Eric Howes notes:

Among the more onerous and objectionable practices currently associated with DR’s software are the fact that

* DR’s software is often illegally stealth-installed through security exploits

* DR’s software is often installed through ActiveX, drive-by-downloads that offer poor notice & disclosure

* DR’s software employs resuscitators to thwart the removal of its software

* DR’s software may arbitrarily remove other software from users’ PCs

* DR’s software provides no locally installed uninstaller (MyPCTuneUp doesn’t count as an uninstaller, even if an “Add/Remove Programs” entry points to it, because the MyPCTuneUp.com site is poorly disclosed to users, may not be accessible if a PC is severely infested with adware, and is reportedly unreliable in removing DR’s software.)

Alex Eckelberry
(thanks Eric)

This is sure starting to look like a hoax.

From Good Morning Silicon Valley, Silicon Beat reports that Magdalena Yesil, who is on the board of Claria (representing US Venture Partners) says that there is no deal. According to SiliconBeat:

“I sit on the board, and I would know if there was such an offer,” she told us, “and I haven’t heard of such an offer.” She said the company has a board meeting at 1:30pm today. About an alleged deal, she repeated: “That is significant enough that I would have known about it.” We’ll try McFadden again this afternoon.

(Also, see latest post here)

Alex Eckelberry