November 15th, 2005
Claria doesn't want you to know they do pop-ups
Everyone remembers the infamous Gator pop-ups, right? The company was even targeted with lawsuits over their use of pop-ups. Now Gator is Claria and they still do pop-ups, but apparently they don’t want you to know that fact before you download their software. Nearly a year ago, spyware/adware expert Ben Edelman ripped Claria’s EULA (End User License Agreement). In that write-up, Edelman wrote "Although Gator is in the pop-up advertising business, Gator uses these terms infrequently. The license first mentions the word "pop-up" at page 18 of 63." Just last month Claria was the target of more criticism due to having their pop-up ads delivered through spyware and exploits.
Now, in his latest post, Edelman says we might wonder how Claria is being installed since they ended their agreement with Grokster and Kazaa. Ben goes on to illustrate Claria’s pop-ups and EULA with screenshots showing how the disclosure has changed from April of this year to now. The activeX warning box in the screenshot from April has verbiage that states "GAIN-branded pop-ups and other ads". The EULA currently in use states"GAIN-branded ads". Hmmm…. we know that users hate pop-ups.
A year ago Claria was using the term pop-ups "infrequently", in April "pop-ups" appeared in the activeX warning box, and now "pop-ups" has all but disappeared from their verbiage. You can draw you own conclusions.
Ben states "Until Claria improves its installation procedures to provide this information, users who run Claria software can’t reasonably be claimed to know what they were getting into." It’s not surprising, then, that Claria and Gator frequently appear in the top ten lists of several anti-spyware sites.
Sunbelt’s Top Ten Real Time Threats
WinPatrol’s Most Detected Mysteryware
SpywareGuide’s Most Prevelant Products
