FPP for skeezy malware marketing

December 4, 2003 7:32 PM

Should there really be a FPP that's really a rather thinly veiled marketing attempt for some rather skeezy malware?
posted by LimePi to Etiquette/Policy at 7:32 PM (26 comments total)

I honestly had no idea what the other activities those guys did. I was merely linking to what I thought was a cool app. And from the conversation on the thread, it's apparently arguable about whether what they're doing is naughty or not.
posted by crunchland at 7:39 PM on December 4, 2003

sorry, crunchland, I didn't mean to be finger-pointing, but the background activities of this program definitely set off my internal unethical business practice detector. I'm sure that you didn't intentionally mean to plug an, ahem, "neural marketing" program, but that doesn't mean unsuspecting uncomments-reading MeFites should unwittingly participate in massive gray-area spamming.
posted by LimePi at 7:58 PM on December 4, 2003

The actual page and application that was the subject of the thread was fine. The organisation behind it seems to be (arguably) involved in some (possibly) nefarious activity, which was discovered as part of the discussion. Some people found some nice applications, we all learned something. This is a problem because ...?
posted by dg at 7:58 PM on December 4, 2003

LimePi: "but the background activities of this program definitely set off my internal unethical business practice detector"

Not intending to derail, but you could elaborate on this a bit since the beastie is sitting there on the bottom of my monitor (showing a very alarming -8)?

I don't really understand the 'distributed computing' thing as it applies to this application.
posted by cedar at 8:24 PM on December 4, 2003

Neural Marketing Are you a Webmaster that needs more quality targeted traffic? if so, then your at the right place! We can drive traffic to your website today to a whole new level with Neural Marketing. This new marketing method will help potential customers find you! Sign-Up now and your link will appear in webmaster log files all over the Internet. This brand new advertising design uses an otherwise untapped resource, the referral link.
posted by LimePi at 8:41 PM on December 4, 2003

Yeah, it's disturbing that they are abusing people's resources without telling them and I've been wondering what to do about the post. Crunchland, I think it's a good post and an honest mistake, but it's probably for the best if I ax the thread, since de-linking the orignal post wouldn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense.

Now this means I'm going to be suspect of any/all "freeware" that might have strings attached. We need a new term. Non-evilware?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:44 PM on December 4, 2003

"Malware"? From where in some geek's hell did that term come?
posted by mischief at 8:49 PM on December 4, 2003

Being easily confused, I re-visited the thread (oh, all right, I wanted to see what the "reason for deletion was") and saw the post itself and then a blank screen, despite the "(23 comments total)" under it. It seems that the deletion explanation is wide enough to push the rest of the thread down below the Google ads. Not that I am pedantic or anything ...
posted by dg at 8:53 PM on December 4, 2003

I wonder if Ad Aware treats these sort of programs as black list items?
posted by taz at 8:57 PM on December 4, 2003

"Malware" has been a pretty standard term for a few years now. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
posted by majcher at 9:04 PM on December 4, 2003

A standard term where?
posted by mischief at 9:15 PM on December 4, 2003

LimePi; I'm really not trying to be difficult... but how does this relate (precisely, because if you don't explain it in detail I won't understand) to the Weather Pulse application (that now tells me it friggin' -10) ?

Isn't your quote above referencing other 'services' the company provides? If not, what is this thing doing in the background without my knowledge? I'm checking my packet transfer and nothing is going on, it's running at a very reasonable 7k, and SpyBot, AdAware and Norton (all updated just this minute) have no problem with it.

What am I missing here?
posted by cedar at 9:17 PM on December 4, 2003

cedar, I was riding on FormlessOne's allegations, which have yet to be confirmed. The site says that there's a quota which is spread over 5-30 days, so the verdict isn't quite out yet, but, it seems like a rather plausible conclusion.

although, I may be wrong.

I guess this can be settled if someone installs this on a spare box, and leaves it alone for a week or two, logging any sort of suspicious behavior. Any takers?
posted by LimePi at 9:46 PM on December 4, 2003

I think they're suggesting that the 'Neural Marketing' consists of the desktop app making web requests without your approval. I had thought they just had their own scripts that hit other people's sites with the REFERRER header set to their client sites. If latter, desktop app totally independant of 'Neural Marketing'. If former, malware at best... Still sounds to me like the latter - why would they need to run it on your machine if they're faking the REFERRER field anyhow?
posted by freebird at 9:54 PM on December 4, 2003

why would they need to run it on your machine if they're faking the REFERRER field anyhow?

So the originating IP address is wildly random instead of being from their own IP.

There's no evidence they're using the weather program to spam sites, but they do produce some spammy software and boast of a worldwide network of spammy devices, so it's quite possible this "free" app comes with strings attached. Even if this weather app is clean of any wrongdoing, I don't like the idea of promoting a company that also creates spam software.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:13 PM on December 4, 2003

So the originating IP address is wildly random instead of being from their own IP.

Yep, I guess that makes sense. And you're right, they seem smarmy regardless.
posted by freebird at 10:23 PM on December 4, 2003

"Webmasters everywhere are discovering a secret weapon
in the battle for profits. Now it's YOUR turn!"

I wonder mathematically the odds that the old grannies just orders the damn vibrator just to get the window out of their way.
posted by Keyser Soze at 11:35 PM on December 4, 2003

A standard term where?

You know, on the internet. Surely you've heard of the internet?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:59 AM on December 5, 2003

never heard of him stav, tho' people say strangers were about last week.
posted by johnnyboy at 2:12 AM on December 5, 2003

For what it's worth, the weather program I linked to is not related to the referrer software also mention. AdAware and Spybot - Search & Destroy both give the Weather Pulse software a thumbs-up, ZoneAlarm doesn't indicate that the software does any sort of activity other than retrieving weather info.
posted by crunchland at 6:43 AM on December 5, 2003

mischief, you've heard of this "google" thing, right? Maybe you could use that to seek out the misty origins of this cryptic jargon.
posted by majcher at 9:36 AM on December 5, 2003

"malware" dates back to 1990 at least.
posted by sonofsamiam at 12:35 PM on December 5, 2003

It's a perfectly cromulent word.
posted by SimStupid at 6:02 PM on December 5, 2003

Keyser Soze:

I wonder mathematically the odds that the old grannies just orders the damn vibrator just to get the window out of their way.

Mathematically speaking, women over sixty-five engage in weekly sexual activity (including masturbation) more than women ages eighteen to twenty-six so the odds that they would order it just to get the window out of the way might be lower than expected. :)
posted by cup at 7:52 PM on December 5, 2003

Interestingly enough, the link in question has gone 404.
posted by Vidiot at 8:15 PM on December 5, 2003

Metafilter : We bully you till you behave the way we think you should.

Now, if only they'd listen to us about the middle east.
posted by crunchland at 8:44 PM on December 5, 2003