In an attempt to take action against a program many believe is adversely affecting affiliate and sponsor relationships, Jim Barnett created a website that contains a link to an htaccess file that detects infected computers and redirects them to a page with removal instructions.
“We are a group of website owners that believe it is time for you to take your PC back,” Barnett said on the AdwareSucks.com site. “According to Zone Alarm, a well-known anti-adware program, ‘Zango is attempting to monitor user activities on your computer. If allowed it may try to track or log keystrokes, mouse movements and clicks, websites visited and other user behaviors.’”
Last week, Zango’s Senior Business Development Director Rocco Bruzzese told XBIZ that his company does not track personally identifiable information.
“Our software does not collect personally identifiable information, ever,” Bruzzese said. “[Zango] software may display several ads per day based upon how often you use your browser and your search activities while browsing, including keywords from the Web sites a consumer visits. But there is no personally identifiable information tracking to accomplish this proprietary, anonymous ad delivery.”
Barnett believes his AdwareSucks.com site is a good start in educating the webmaster community about the threat he believes Zango poses.
“We as a whole, believe [Zango] is a scourge that needs to be fought at the grassroots level,” Barnett said. “While taking over your PC browsing by Zango is not illegal, we believe in your right to be informed. When you allowed this toolbar to be installed on your PC, you inadvertently agreed to allow Zango to do this to you.”
After downloading the software, the user is served contextual popup ads while surfing, from companies that have bid on relevant keywords in an auction-based system. This bidding system, similar to other pay-per-click search engines, has pitted large adult sponsor programs against each other by bidding on competitors’ keywords.
While Bruzzese claims that Zango simply can be deleted from the “Add/Remove Programs” tab in Control Panel, Greenguy & Jim’s removal instructions are more complicated. According to the instructions on AdwareSucks.com, the user must delete Zango footprints in their PC’s registry files and directories.