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It was last week, on the 14th, that Ben Edelman showed that C-NetMedia (not to be confused with CNET) was using highly deceptive advertising to lure people to its sites.

It’s still going on, despite press on the matter.

This morning, a search for SpyBot again shows C-NetMedia trying to trick people into thinking their site (spywarebot.com) is Spybot’s:

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It’s just as bad on Yahoo, which skews toward a demographic that is arguably not as computer savvy as Google’s (providing a potentially better opportunity for deception).

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And a search for Ad-Aware still has their ad for adwarealert.com. HIGHLY deceptive.

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(And we all know that many people will click on the first result, not fully understanding that it’s a sponsored link.)

Then, look what these crooks are doing with Microsoft Antispyware (antispyware.com):

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And that site, incidentally, sure looks like Microsoft’s site, as Ben Edelman pointed out:

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(Image credit: Ben Edelman)

I’m sure there’s more, this is all I have time for right now.

I’m afraid it’s going to take the FTC to handle this one. Apparently the search engines aren’t self-policing on this one.

Alex Eckelberry