also @ TechSpot: Weekend Open Forum: Most memorable videogame boss fights

Snopes peddling malware?

By

On January 28, 2008, 8:44 PM EST

Every once in a while, we hear about a legit site pushing malware. The reasons are varied, with some sites getting hacked, others relying on 3rd party vendors that may be less than trustworthy or they may just plain not feel there is anything wrong with pushing annoying or downright bad software onto people.

Snopes has been targeted as one of them. It seems for half a year now the company has been pushing Zango, formerly 180Solutions, onto people visiting the site in one form or another. Zango, whose own (former) employees don't have anything good to say about it, has been spotted more than once peddling their wares in shady ways. So much so that the FTC saw it fit to levy a huge fine on the company. So why would Snopes, a site that has gained a considerable amount of fame for interesting factoids in dispelling or confirming urban legends, want to associate with these folks?

Money is one reason, though third party association is another. Regardless, it seems Snopes is very well aware that they are divvying up ads for Zango. I suppose someone has to, else where would Zango get the money to pay their millions in fines the next time the FTC comes after them.

Related Stories

No tags on this story

User Comments (2)

Post a comment
smithkl42
on January 29, 2008
7:35 PM
After reading Alex' posting, and your article above, I’ll confess, I’m a little perplexed as to what Alex is complaining about. As far as I can tell, he’s taking Zango and Snopes to task for showing ads. It’s a unique charge, I’ll grant you, but somewhat mystifying in its scope.For some badly needed perspective, you may want to refer to my blog post responding to Alex:[url]http://smithkl42.blogspot.com/2008/01/regrettable-
illiness.html[/url]Ken SmithCTO, Zango

Reply

trumper
on February 11, 2008
3:43 AM
That's a terribly lazy and unhelpful straw man, Ken. Alex explains in the article why Zango is so rightly mistrusted. I'm sure *you* think it's fine for your company to force adware onto untechnical people who don't understand what they're installing, and to "help" them by redirecting typo'd URLs to your clients, and serving pop-up ads that they can't turn off. Some people see this as poor behaviour - it's not because they're against "showing ads". Techspot is running ethical AdSense right on this page. Stop kidding yourself.(It looks like Snopes has dropped you, anyway: http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/zango-defends-snopes
html)[Edited by trumper on 2008-02-11 03:48:19]

Reply

Browse more commented news

Post a new comment

Guest user

To post as an anonymous
user click here
.

Members

If you are a TechSpot member,
please login first.


By signing up you gain complete access to the TechSpot community. Join thousands of computer and technology enthusiasts that contribute and share knowledge in our forum. Post messages, get a private inbox, upload your own photo gallery and more.

Subscribe to TechSpot

Get free exclusive content, learn about new features and tech breaking news.