Report New Spyware Here

Hi All:

You might have heard about the recent arrangement between Aluria (makers of Spyware Eliminator, a version of which is bundled with AOL 9.0) and WhenU, one of the more well-known distributors of adware. See here for the press release:

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/10-27-2004/0002312862&EDATE

Aluria agreed to de-list WhenU from the defintions it uses for Spyware Eliminator. Suzi at Spyware Warrior has blogged about this:

http://www.netrn.net/spywareblog/

And there's a news story on the same subject here at DSLR/BBR:

http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/56178

But I just discovered that the situation is much worse than I originally thought. What we have here is more than a case of a little mutual back scratching with cross-promotion and links. See:

http://www.whenu.com/whenu_solution.html

From that page:


said by WhenU:
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WhenU is committed to protecting consumers' privacy and consumer PCs against dangerous spyware. This is why WhenU has teamed up with Aluria Software, a leading provider of anti-spyware tools, to provide WhenU consumers with UControl.

UControl is the first product in the online advertising industry that provides a comprehensive scan of your computer and removes unwanted spyware programs, while continuing to provide the deals, offers and value consumers have come to expect from WhenU contextual products.
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See also:

Anti-Spyware Portal » http://www.whenu.com/take_control.html

Free Scan www.whenu.com/take_control.html

In other words, WhenU is now in the anti-spyware business now with Aluria. And a major anti-spyware vendor has now agreed to de-list an adware vendor and start working the same vendor to market its anti-spyware product.

I am stunned and amazed.

Eric L. Howes

Full thread:
http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,11723816~mode=flat~days=9999

Just like Eric I too am stunned and amazed as well !!!! Hopefully others such as Ad-aware and Spybot will not follow suit and join up with other purveyors of adware . I wonder what users of Spyware Eliminator think about this situation ???

[Negster22]

How ironic!  Just shows you that some companies think nothing of compromising their ethical standards in their quest for money and self promotion.  I am confident that Lavasoft and Patrick M. Kolla (Spybot S&D) would never stoop to this level.  It does underscore the need to donate to these trusted companies, so they will never have to resort to similar methods to assure their survival.