Zango's Latest Trick: Pitching Fake Batman MMORPG To Get People To Download Adware
from the and-so-it-goes dept
We've talked about Zango's continued claims that it's a changed company from the one that paid huge fines for tricking people into downloading its intrusive adware, but somethings never really seem to change. An anonymous reader points us to an ad found on a bunch of legitimate video game sites recently, pitching a new Batman online virtual world game, but if you click through, it turns out that it's just a severely limited demo version of a client-side Batman game from 2001. Despite the ad promising all sorts of things, such as "play online with your friends" the actual download has none of that... but it does include an install of Zango. Chris Boyd, who figured all this out wonders why the sites that ran this ad did so, knowing that it was almost certainly bogus. Zango, of course, will blame a "rogue affiliate" which is what they always do -- but Boyd wonders why they won't actually identify who's responsible.
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but Boyd wonders why they won't actually identify who's responsible.
Honor among theives ?
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Isn't "zango" used in the Batman series along side of "socko" and "pow" ?
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I hope Zango crashes and burns. They're snakes..
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Until zango adware no longer appears on my clients' computers, I hate them.
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Zango Sucks Great Big Gobbs of Greasy Grimey Gopher Guts.
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Uh, I think a few bigger companies are going to fight back at this one . . .
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They Pull Dirty Tricks
One of the most obnoxious things about Zango is when their pop up shows up, if you hit cancel too quickly it actually installs the software because they use a long worded question that basically says to hit OK to cancel and cancel to install. I could see how a lot of people download the program because they're clicking too fast and once it's on your machine say good night. At this point, I'm pretty much boycotting any site that has the Zango software as well as any site that uses interstitial ads (although that a different issue)
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This is why User Access Control is a good thing.
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Re:
Your way to kind Terri.
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Boycott them . . . dammit!
"Hopefully, there are still enough Senators who haven't been convinced by the propaganda provided by the entertainment industry on this issue to recognize what's actually at stake here."
What game sites are they, we should know so that we might never frequent them again.
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Re: They Pull Dirty Tricks
... once it's on your machine say good night.
1) wipe hard drive
2) reinstall OS
3) start over (you did backup your data - right?)
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Re: Re: They Pull Dirty Tricks
If you have to wipe your drive to get rid of Zango (which always seems to come with a side of ClickSpring and Virtumod), then you need a better anti-malware software.
You were being sarcastic, right?
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wat is fake-piching
what is fake-pitching
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They use other methods too
Had to download and install software, not fully aware at the time, clicked the link (very realistic impersonation of the real site's url) to install and next thing I know Zango is installing on my machine. THEN, after it installs, I get a message that states the actual download I was after could not be downloaded from their site, it has been removed. As I found the real site and started the download, Norton went ballistic...I'm STILL cleaning the crap off my pc 2 days later as Norton finds new instances. I may just wipe it and start over.
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Zango
WOW! I'm so glad I read this! I just started to download
it and decided to read up on it first! They make it look so real!
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Zango Must DIE!!!!!!
I hope who ever made zango burns in hell
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Zango horror
so I'm on aim nothing special... a random user sends me a porno advertisement... no thanks. Zango reads the input and starts opening thousands of porn pages which open more by themselves ignoring pop up blocker.
If you have Zango your volume should always be turned on low :) I plan to make a lot of money some day.. Me and my friends who are all in programming have all experienced Zango, and we will bring it down. Legally or illegally... :D
My friends currently hack school networks for fun remotely shutting down computers and 1 of my friends is RICH so Zango is FUCKED like my last computer was :)
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