Protecting against visitor theft by Scumware

In the never ending battle to optimize advertising dollars, both Microsoft, Ezula and Gator have come up with plans to highjack your visitors.  They have created a way to hyperlink certain keywords and phrases on your website to their advertisers.  Microsoft underlines their link with a purple "squiggle" to show that they are "smart tags"; TOPText uses a yellow highlighter  (Click here  or here, or on the thumbnail to the left for an example of TOPText in use); and Gator pops their own ad over your advertisers banners.  Anyone viewing the page could then click on the tag and be transported to the website which has paid MS, Ezula or Gator to advertise their product to your customers.  

Microsoft's SmartTags are downloaded as part of the XP technology.  After public pressure, they agreed to make SmartTags opt-in - this time.  They have not agreed to keep them opt-in and a petition is now circulating asking MS to continue their opt-in policy.  (Sign the petition.)  Webmasters can keep MS smart tags from working on their site by including a special "opt-out" metatag in the header of each and every page. Here it is: 

<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">

eZula's TOPText, which is downloaded automatically with many programs such as KaZaa, allows them to display keyword targeted links on your site, without your permission and without compensation of any kind.  Not only is TOPText not an opt-in program, it's not even opt-out.  

SearchKing had created a way to prevent their links from showing up on your site BUT it is no longer effective.  If you have the SearchKing script on your page, take it down.  It now redirects to a pop up ad:-((

SgtSearch believes Ezula uses CSS/VB/DHTML, and their ability to utilize the SPAN feature, which is an HTML tag used to indicate a portion of the text within another tag for special processing.   They suggest adding this code to each page between your head tags:

<!-- StopText code courtesy SgtSearch.com and Thiefware.com -->
<style type="text/css"><!-- span {font-size:1px} --></style>
<!-- Stop here and insert into your site head tags -->

If you were going to add it to your external style sheet, it would look like this:

span {font-size:1px}

Thiefware also offers a JavaScript TopText disabler.  This one is placed in the root of your web.  TakeBackTheWeb has a JavaScript that redirects your visitors to Lavasoft's Ad-Aware program.

For more protection against Scumware, check out Spybot.

Gator, a highly useful program which remembers passwords, also collects user information. In a new twist to steal advertising, however, Gator has created an advertising program in which their ads are cleverly configured to overlay existing ads.  This has landed them in trouble with the courts.

Ezula and Gator's refusal to consider the impact on the webmasters of the sites they infringe upon has spawned a new term - Scumware - and a number of websites dedicated to putting them out of business.  Although there is hope a copyright or trademark infringement lawsuit will put a stop to these tactics, perhaps the best way to put them out of business would be to make it unprofitable . Ezula has indicated it has over 30 advertisers, such as BMG, McAfee.com, WellsFargo Bank, and HomeGain.  A letter or E-mail to each of these advertisers protesting their tactics and refusing to buy their products might influence them to give up their association with unethical advertisers.