Scumbags Hijack your Web Sites
"Imagine how powerful it could be to widen the effectiveness
of search engine keyword advertising to the entire Web.
This will enable you to reach millions of qualified users
from every web page that contextually matches your campaign
objective and your product or service keywords, anywhere
on the Web." – eZula.com
eZula is a new Pay Per Click
service and they have partnered with you to drive visitors
away from your web site. You don't get to choose about
participating and the only reward you will get is….
well, actually you don't get diddly.
You do get something, but I can't say
what in polite company.
They get to sell targeted traffic based
on the content of every web page in the world without
having to resort to developing any content, running
a PPC search engine, or actually doing much of anything.
Sounds like the Web to me.
Currently, TopText only works with the
Microsoft Internet Explorer browser.
To back up a bit before continuing to
vent my anger over this issue, the story goes something
like this:
There
is a new file sharing system launched in the wake of
the MP3 sharing/stealing war, and the new system is
called KaZaa.
You download it, install it and get right back to sharing
bootleg music files. KaZaa claims that almost 6 million
people have downloaded and installed its system.
Unfortunately when you install KaZaa
you also get at least one virus installed on your computer.
I call it a virus because by most descriptions I've
seen of the term, TopText qualifies as a virus. You
don't ask for it. It takes control of your browser and
makes changes to everything you read on the Internet.
TopText operates with a browser to highlight
words on every web page, inserting a yellow background
behind keywords that have been purchased through their
media sales company eZula, Inc. If a web user clicks
on one of those yellow highlighted words on a web page,
the user is whisked away to the site of the company
paying the most that day for each click-through. If
a user whose browser is infected with TopText visits
your web site, they will be offered links to competitor's
web sites for every keyword they find on your site for
which they have a buyer.
This is not much, if any, different from
the Smart Tags system that Microsoft announced for their
Windows XP browser. Media and webmaster pressure and
outrage caused Microsoft to cancel, for now, their release
of that feature.
This new invasion of our web sites is
different because the media appears to care not at all.
Where is their righteous indignation now? I'll tell
you… nowhere. Talking about a bunch of companies nobody
has ever heard of is not glitzy enough compared to attacking
Microsoft.
So, if this misuse of technology is to
be beaten, you are going to have to do it.
Word was that you can send your list
of sites to mailto:support@ezula.com and they would
block their virus from operating on your pages. That
turns out to be untrue but phone calls to eZula are
showing some results. If all 300,000 of you call in
your list and follow up every day until they block it,
you could probably show them a little something about
how webmasters feel about companies infringing on their
intellectual property rights.
Respected download web sites such as
C/NET's Download.com
are actively helping this virus to spread on an unsuspecting
world. I wonder why they would distribute something
that would place links to competitor sites on their
own web pages? After repeated attempts to enlist their
help in stopping the spread of this virus, C/NET continues
to defend their position of aiding the spread of this
unethical program. Must really need the banner impressions.
EZula claims that they have a relationship
with a major ISP which should come as no surprise keeping
in mind how many ISPs are starving for income.
The MP3 file sharing software allows
anyone to share files for free. Free is the only model
that works for that whole industry. People don't want
to pay when they can get valuable content for free.
So KaZaa had to find somewhere that they could generate
profits without have to work at it. So they chose my
web site and yours. If they can steal our traffic and
sell it to our competitors, that should be profitable,
right?
Sure it is. They can get (currently)
from $.30 to $1.00 for every click through and they
don't have to share with anyone. Does anyone else see
the irony in this? It shouldn't come as a great surprise
that a company built on the premise that everyone should
be able to get free music and cut the musicians totally
out of the system would turn to another way of stealing
content and do it in a way that cuts the content developers
total out of the system.
Why pay to advertise on my web site when
you can pay these bozos to hack into my content and
send you some cheap, stolen traffic. To add insult to
injury, they deface my sites with their ugly yellow
background colors.
Maybe TopText is both a virus and a hacker
at the same time. Hackers find ways to change the content
of your web pages. TopText does it by infecting Net
user's computers.
Hacus? VirCker? Scumbag?
Written by: Jim Wilson
