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Sneaky Add-On Annotates Ads To Your Web Surfing Experience
from the sneaky-bastards dept
Well, it's about time for the next big controversy to spring up, so here's a candidate. One of the popular new music sharing programs is KaZaa. KaZaa has a deal with EZula to automatically install a program called TOPText which adds random "advertisment" hyperlinks on any webpage you surf. It's very similar to Microsoft's SmartTags idea, or ThirdVoice's defunct annotation program - except that most people don't realize they've installed it. They think their surfing experience has been hijacked and they might be right. The article gives a number of examples where a site has the added "advertisement hyperlinks" to a competing site. Can't wait for people to get angry about this one.
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Kazaa Hi-Jacking
I recently updated to the new version of Kazaa, and although I had no Idea that it was "smart tag" like software that would be installed, I was prompted as to whether or not I wanted to install it (which is to say, that I opted out of that particular "feature"). So although it's not my cup of tea, I can't blame Kazaa for trying to make a buck, but I can blame lazy PC users for just clicking through Installation menus without reading what the hell is going on in them, and then being annoyed at the consequences of their lack of attention. Just my 2 cents.
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will the s**t hit the fan?
Now I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy...and I remember quite well the uproar (and my own sense of indignation) when they tried to do this themselves.
I still think this is a sleazy and insidious way to advertise, with many questionable ethical uses (ie: the fact that those tags can be used to highjack traffic from a competitor's site).
I'm hoping this will raise as much of a stink for this company as it did for Microsoft...
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