How Your Vonage Service Fees Help Fund Spyware

Scams

from the another-bad-PR-day dept

Vonage has had a pretty bad couple of months. There was the botched IPO leading to plenty of pissed off shareholder customers, combined with a few new patent lawsuits. The stock hasn’t done well at all — something many predicted well before the IPO in the first place. Now, spyware researcher Ben Edelman has released his latest article, noting that Vonage ads seem to show up in an awful lot of spyware — including every one of the major spyware providers. And you wondered why the customer acquisition costs were so high? Now you know that a large chunk of that money was going directly into the bank accounts of some awfully questionable companies.

Spyware Wants To Be Your Friend On MySpace

Scams

from the how-nice dept

Sandbagger writes “A security researcher has discovered a ring of websites that look like regular “MySpace profile edit” sites. The killer is this: they try to get you to add “their” videos onto your profile page (with the addition of some code), but don’t mention the fact that if you add these videos, they pop open an installer box to any visitors that tries to get them to install Zango adware onto the PC. The original affiliate make money every time it’s installed, and all you get is a heap of complaints (and possibly a banned profile) because your profile is trying to install adware on visitors’ computers. As the researcher notes, video files that try to install adware aren’t new, but using unknowing teens to push adware is some kind of new low.”

Direct Revenue Spyware Infected Company's Own Investors

Scams

from the whoops dept

We’ve followed the saga of spyware maker Direct Revenue for years. Back in 2004, they claimed they were changing their ways and becoming more transparent. Since then, we’ve noted repeatedly how the company continued its sneaky ways, eventually leading to a lawsuit filed in NY earlier this year. That lawsuit meant that a lot of internal documents were made public, revealing a lot about what went on at the company, suggesting it wasn’t at all interested in really cleaning up its act. Business Week has now put together a very thorough piece using those documents and additional reporting to look at what was really happening inside Direct Revenue the past few years.

The story isn’t likely to surprise many people. As if to answer our own question of how the company could possibly make money if it wasn’t sneaky, the internal documents show that as soon as the company tried to be more transparent and less evil, people didn’t want their software. That resulted in an email from one of the company’s founders (that was written after those promises to be a good actor in the space) stating: “We need to experiment with less user-friendly uninstall methodologies.” However, one of the more interesting stories concerns some of the investors who threw millions at the company (allowing its founders to pocket millions on their own as well). According to the Business Week piece, a managing director at one of the company’s investors got infected by Direct Revenue’s software, and couldn’t get rid of it (of course). Eventually the company had to send its customer support director over to their investors’ offices to fix the machine. Makes you wonder just what sort of due diligence the investors actually did before investing in this company.

Sony BMG Rootkit Virus Writers Arrested

Scams

from the will-they-blame-Sony-BMG? dept

It’s been a while since we heard much about the infamous Sony BMG rootkit fiasco. However, with three virus writers getting arrested this weekend, Jeremy Wagstaff is pointing out that the virus they’re accused of writing made use of the rootkit vulnerability to infect thousands of computers. This was the virus that showed up just days after Sony insisted that no one should care about the Sony BMG rootkits because most people had no clue what rootkits were.

And The Lord Said, Let There Be Spywayre

Scams

from the moral-relativism-in-digital-worlds dept

Apparently, “Thou shalt not distribute spyware” isn’t one of the Ten Commandments. Left Behind Games, a maker of evangelical Christian videogames, has partnered with startup Double Fusion to distribute and track in-game advertising. There’s nothing new about in-game advertising itself, and it can even enhance the realism of the game. But when you’re battling the Antichrist on the streets of Manhattan, and pause to read a billboard on the side of a building, you probably don’t expect that information (along with your personal information) to be sent to the advertiser. For Left Behind’s part, the company has been getting these games into kids’ hands by distributing free disks at churches around the country. This is straight out of the spyware playbook: give out free games and then track the user. It’s no surprise that the in-game advertising market would give rise to user tracking — information that marketers love — but who would have guessed that a Christian company would be such a pioneer in this type of activity?

What Do You Do When 80 Other People Are Using Your Social Security Number?

Scams

from the good-luck dept

With so many data leaks these days, whatever little belief you had that your social security number was private should now be completely shattered. It’s a joke that anyone still uses SSNs for any form of identification — and yet it’s still considered the standard. Perhaps a few more cases like the following one will help rectify that. A woman who had not worked in a few years was surprised recently to receive a note from the IRS about taxes she owed. As she tried to get to the bottom of the situation, she discovered that her social security number was being used by at least 80 individuals around the country to help them get jobs. What happened after that demonstrates just how screwed up the system is. While she continued to run into various problems due to others using her SSN (including being held at customs because someone using her SSN was wanted for a felony and having trouble getting a new job), the IRS basically told her that she was going to face the same set of problems every year, and there was basically nothing she could do about it (other than get a new SSN, which she eventually did). In the meantime, can someone explain why Social Security Numbers are still being used for identification at all?

Extortion By Yahoo Message Board?

Scams

from the seems-pretty-pointless dept

It’s always surprising when we hear about a company getting upset about some anonymous posts on a random stock message board — because you would think, by now, everyone knows not to pay much attention to the posters on those boards. However, as alarm:clock notes, one company found their stock board troll wasn’t just persistent and annoying, but actually tried to extort money and stock from the company in order to get him to go away. Of course, the only thing he got out of the company appears to be a lawsuit.

Techies Robbing Companies With Procurement Fraud

Scams

from the more-common-than-you-may-think? dept

These days, with the publicity surrounding the Enron trials, the idea of companies setting up elaborate schemes using shell corporations isn’t that new. In the Enron case, it appears to have been a corporate effort to do so. However, there are plenty of cases coming to light of employees setting up shell corporations to rob their own employers. Five years ago, we wrote about a “Business Development” VP at Cisco who was caught setting up an elaborate scheme of shell companies and fake venture capital firms to divert plenty of Cisco money into his own bank account. When accused, he first claimed it was simply his effort to “think outside of the box,” which is an interesting defense. However, Baseline Magazine has a collection of articles suggesting that this type of activity is actually more common than many believe, and that it’s often the IT staff, with their huge budgets, that are able to set up such procurement fraud scams. The article has four examples of techie procurement fraud, including the NY City Medical Examiner’s office using procurement fraud in the wake of 9/11 and the Canadian Department of National Defense robbing tax payers blind through shell corporations. However, perhaps the most stunning is the story of the restaurant chain Buca, which was the victim of procurement fraud from two top execs, who were so blatant as to set up one such shell corporation in the same building as Buca’s headquarters and then billed Buca for the office space.