Pop-Up Anecdote
Yesterday's New York Times had another story about pop-up ad companies Gator and WhenU and how their software coughs up ads anywhere on the Net. Companies such as the New York Times, Weight Watchers and U-Haul have complained, saying they want full control of who advertises on their sites since readers already assume they're the ones responsible for the ads.

The NYT story notes that Gator claims it has 37 million users and WhenU says it has 30 million users. But it doesn't point out that some of their users (though I'm betting it's close to most) have no idea they've downloaded the ad software.

My dear old dad, who spends more time on the Internet than he cares to admit in public, was so fed up with pop-up ads that he was ready to switch his ISP. He'd call me up, wanting to know how to get rid of Internet Explorer -- since almost all of the ads that popped up said Internet Explorer, followed by the name of the ad, or maybe Gator, he at first thought IE was at fault.

Far from any kind of tech geek myself, I tried my best to help him get rid of all the stuff clogging up his computer and slowing him down. He's now gotten rid of MSN, purchased a new virus protection program, loaded up AdAware and uninstalled a pop-up blocker that added a full line of pseudo-search function keys atop his browser (including a big link to "sportsbook.")

We also spent hours trying to uninstall secret programs, including Gator. Dad of course had no idea what Gator was, or how he got it. I few searches via Google led us to his culprit: a music downloading program called iMesh. Nowhere on the iMesh pages does it tip off readers that as part of its free download, they're also getting Gator spyware. Though to be fair, I didn't click the "download" button to see if they alert users during the actual download process. But I certainly couldn't find it on the site without clicking download.

Though if you poke around Gator's site and go to their press room, their frequently asked questions gives a defense of their actions, such as all ads "are 'permission-based' and require an active consumer action before the software is downloaded and installed."

Want to see if you have it? Do a search on your computer for Gator or GAIN. And look into virus protection and free software such as AdAware to get rid of other secret software cooties.

Dad's a convert to the wisdom of columnist Dr. Bombay. Check out his Essential Stuff page and scroll down to the bottom under "Fight Back" for more on this same topic.

One last thing. While the spyware turned out to be the main problem for my dad, I think Web content providers and ISPs may still be underestimating how angry consumers are about pop-up ads. Though I suspect the pop-up problem has to get a lot worse before people start to take it as seriously as the spam problem.

Earlier:

Evil MSView
- posted by Amy @ 7/08/2003 11:23:00 AM