The Tangled Web Of Yahoo's Adware Partners

from the this-again? dept

This isn’t the first time the issue has been brought up, but we keep seeing stories concerning Yahoo’s relationship to adware vendors. In the past, most of the associations have been with Claria, where Yahoo has been mostly (though not entirely) open about the relationship. However, now, people are pointing out that recently sued adware firm Direct Revenue gets an awful lot of revenue from Yahoo. Yahoo responds by noting that they had no direct relationship with Direct Revenue at all — which demonstrates just how convoluted these deals are. There are always some sort of middlemen involved, who broker the deals between the ad network and the adware, allowing the ad network (and the advertisers) to claim ignorance. Of course, the real question is whether it’s legitimate ignorance, or if it’s a “don’t ask, don’t tell” sort of situation, where they purposely go out of their way to not find out what’s going on. From a PR standpoint, it still looks bad, and gives you the sense that a company like Yahoo should be doing more to understand where its ads really are appearing.


Rate this comment as insightful
Rate this comment as funny
You have rated this comment as insightful
You have rated this comment as funny
Flag this comment as abusive/trolling/spam
You have flagged this comment
The first word has already been claimed
The last word has already been claimed
Insightful Lightbulb icon Funny Laughing icon Abusive/trolling/spam Flag icon Insightful badge Lightbulb icon Funny badge Laughing icon Comments icon

Comments on “The Tangled Web Of Yahoo's Adware Partners”

Subscribe: RSS Leave a comment
14 Comments
nothing is ever free says:

somebody is going told you so

and people are just now noticing

have you ever tried installing yahoo?

the hoops you have to jump through to do it and how many times when you install something else do you get asked to install yahoo toolbar ? I always do custom installs so I know when yahoo is trying to give me their toolbar with something else that I want

Mike R says:

Re: Re:

yeah, Sam, I’ve noticed them too, but go to google.com and look at how many ads you see. Then go to yahoo.com, but, hang on for a wild ride of ads, where 3/4 the links aren’t actually useful but rather some method of getting to your pocket.

Google toolbar, I trust, I simply find useless, what with Firefox’s integration of google search. Yahoo’s is both useless AND blatantly spyware. (Or does Google’s track and report usage as well?)

Coyote says:

Re: Re: Google Toolbar

The Gogle Toolbar does submit the URL of every page you visit if you turn the advanced features on. It has to in order to query the pagerank rating. This is really no different than doing a google search: Google tracks in aggregate what you search for, what results are returned, and (if you use their cache) what sites you actually visit.

No more Brains says:

Spy On us some more jerks

I think we need to start our own internet. Let this one be free of our government data mining us, and spying on us. Today, it costs us an arm and a leg, so we can have our computers messed up with spyware, trojans and the like. To make it all worse, is that they want to sell us something to give us huge private parts. The internet is no longer free… Our gov.. and bad business’s like yahoo and Microsoft have teamed up.. I think we need to fight back and create a real world free internet- and let the doctrine read, any gov that tries to censor it or use it to spy on us.. can and should be taken out… Freedom always win… LUKE YOU HAVE THE FORCE…

yahoo sucks ass says:

yahoo sucks

Yahoo has really gone downhill. I rememebr when PEOPLE used to go into their chatrooms, now its just tons of pornbots spamming the room. You cant find anyone to talk to in any of them.

I find it funny how they got rid of user rooms to ” protect the children” Then they go on a full bore support for porn bots to hijack their rooms and harass legitimate users. Eventually their foolish way of practicing business will lead to their downfall. They have ZERO customer support. When you email them with a question you get a automated message about how they care, etc, etc.

I once had an account hijacked, and they offerend no support whatsoever. They kept asking me for a stupid codeword, without understanding, the asshole who jacked my account changed it. IDIOTS.

Id love to see the CEO of yahoo dragged out in handcuffs for his criminal misdeeds with yahoo messenger, and the Artificially Unintelligent cesspool their chatrooms have become.

Yahoo messenger also dumps adware onto your harddrive. Dont believe me? Run messenger, and then check your local settings, notice alot of ads. Myspace messenger does the same thing. Im sick of companies using these dirty tricks, and even installing software WITHOUT your consent on your hard drive. Fuck these companies right in their collective asses.

Leave a Reply to Shadowjack Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here

Comment Options:

Make this the or (get credits or sign in to see balance) what's this?

What's this?

Techdirt community members with Techdirt Credits can spotlight a comment as either the "First Word" or "Last Word" on a particular comment thread. Credits can be purchased at the Techdirt Insider Shop »

Follow Techdirt

Techdirt Daily Newsletter

Ctrl-Alt-Speech

A weekly news podcast from
Mike Masnick & Ben Whitelaw

Subscribe now to Ctrl-Alt-Speech »
Techdirt Deals
Techdirt Insider Discord
The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...
Loading...