Turning Adware into Shameware

[ronjor]

-{ Quote: "The Center for Demoracy and Technology today released the names of nearly a dozen companies who are among the biggest customers of 180solutions, a Bellevue, Wash., adware maker whose storied history with unauthorized installations has been the subject of numerous Security Fix blog posts and other articles." }-
Story (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/03/turning_adware_into_shameware.html)

[ErikAlbert]

Good move of CDT, but I still believe that personalized advertising on PC's will be a fact and generally accepted by the users somewhere in the future.
It will take some time, maybe even new generations of people and much less irritating methods to do this, but you can't stop the money train.

[Lamehand]

Why would it be accepted in the future?, will people be more stupid then?
Or would it be that Microsoft/Intel/AMD "own" your computer?
Then it couldn't be stopped, and that would be bad, very bad indeed.
After all it is my computer, even in the futere for that matter.

Abe

[ErikAlbert]

In Belgium advertising on TV was forbidden for a long time.
Nowadays every TV station has lots of advertising, even our oldest TV station couldn't resist in the very end.
Of course not everybody liked it, but nobody complains anymore because they got used to it.
Sex and dirty words on TV was a scandal a long time ago and nowadays people consider it as normal.

Advertising on PC is not accepted by most people nowadays, just like advertising on TV was forbidden for many years in the past.
A year ago, I've read an article at SWI about students, who didn't care about adwares on their PC anymore, because they got some freewares in return (Sorry, I don't have the link anymore).
So there is already a change in attitude towards advertising on PC, because younger generations, don't think the same way as older generations and they don't have the same values.
That attitude won't change in just ONE day, but it will change very gradually.

Do you really think that the business world is going to put advertising on PC aside, just because people don't like it NOW ?
Advertising on PC will have even more impact on people than on TV, because it isn't general like on TV. Show the advertising, when people are looking for something, want something or buy something and that's only possible on PC, not on TV.
There are about 500-600 millions PC's in the world and that number is growing every day and the business world will do everything to manipulate people behind these PC's, like they always did, but this time even better.
Money rules ... advertising on PC is so predictable that I don't have any doubts about this.

[Lamehand]

Hi ErikAlbert

I agree with you on the fact that there will be more advertising on the internet
but i don't think that everybody will accept this on their PC now or in the future
there are, and always will be, people who click on anything that is "free",on the other hand there will be people who don't accept this.

The trouble is adware comes almost always with a present they don't tell you about,something that will collect information about you and that is the price you
pay for "free".Compared to that TV-advertising is harmless because you can switch it off or zap to another channel.

By the way, where those students who didn't care about adware on their computer informed about the consequence of their actions?

Greetings
Abe

[ErikAlbert]

-{ Quote: "
By the way, where those students who didn't care about adware on their computer informed about the consequence of their actions?" }-
I don't know. It's a year ago and the link is somewhere burried in the many posts at SWI and I have neither the courage nor the time to search for it.
I was stupified by this article and that's the only reason why I remember it.

The actual methods of advertising on PC are very underhand, aggressive, intrusive, irritating and create troubles on your system sooner or later. I'm quite surprised that adware makers were so stupid to do it this way, they treat people like dirt this way.
So I assume that new more friendly methods will be developped in the future to make advertising on PC possible.

Regards,

[Lamehand]

ErikAlbert

I agree with you on that point, if it where less intrusive and more userfriendly it would/could be more widely accepted.

The future will tell.

Greetings
Abe