More EULA Viruses
from the they're-everywhere dept
Late last year, there were a bunch of articles talking about a “marketing” company that was offering greeting cards with a sneaky little caveat thrown into the end user license agreement (EULA) that you clicked through to view your card. It said that anyone who agreed to the terms was opening up their computer to the company and granted them the privilege of sending similar greeting cards to everyone else in their address book. The virus firms at the time kept struggling with whether or not to consider this a “virus” since it was legally clear from the EULA. It’s unclear if a final decision was ever made, but the issue is showing up again as yet another company has created a similar EULA virus that will spam everyone in your address book and people on your instant messaging buddy list with links to “humorous” (not everyone will agree) content. I can just imagine the business user who accidentally emails all of his business associates links to some sophomoric humor site. Either way, this is clearly a misuse of the EULA, and should help to bring up the question of what’s reasonable to include in an EULA.
