Well, it seems the firestorm of protest has had its effect: Snopes (apparently) is no longer pushing Zango. This seems to have changed yesterday evening (the last time I confirmed the popup was at about 4 pm EDT yesterday).
There were lots of comments on this one.
I did notice a fair number of comments saying something to the effect that “hey, the site has every reason to monetize its traffic through advertising”, etc.
So I have to make a few points:
1. I have no problem with advertising.
2. I have no problem with sites using advertising to pay their bills.
3. I do have a problem with a site consistently pushing one particular popup that pushes adware.
Again, it’s not like this popup was occurring on some limited basis, or part of a series of ads. This was a consistent campaign that showed up regularly, for a long time (probably over a year).
I’m glad Snopes has (apparently) changed it’s position. Now, we have to work on a few other sites… 😉
To all of you who helped, thank you. I do think this will make a difference in reducing the amount of adware in the wild.
Alex Eckelberry
Update: It’s official.