News: Dodgy Viral Marketing

By | November 24, 2011
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 The folks at Sophos antivirus are drawing attention to something I think is going to pose a real problem for more sincerely motivated companies: Dodgy Viral Marketing or DVM. It’s nothing new, but it’s back, and it works like this: receive an email which invites you to visit a website to view comedy video clips, such as one of Bill Gates being hit with a custard pie by Belgian anarchists. (Gratuitous picture of Bill Gates being hit with a custard pie by Belgian anarchists now follows):
 
 
Follow the link in the email, and you are invited to install an application called “Internet Optimizer” (IO) from a website run by Avenue Media NV, based in the Caribbean island of Curacao. An end-user license agreement (EULA) for IO is displayed, stating that by viewing the movie you are giving permission to send an invitation to view video clips to all addresses found in the user’s Outlook address book and via instant messaging systems: “In consideration for viewing of video content, Avenue Media may send email to your Microsoft Outlook contacts and/or send instant messages to your IM contacts offering the video to them on your behalf. By viewing the video content, you expressly consent to said activity.”
 
Whoa! Back up the cart a bit, Alfie! And that’s not all. The EULA continues: ”For your convenience, [IO] automatically updates itself and any other [IO]-installed software to the latest available versions at periodic intervals. In consideration for this feature, you grant Avenue Media access to your machine to automatically update [IO], add new features and other benefits, and periodically install and uninstall optional software packages.” Great, excellent! Come on in!
 
Needless to say, Sophos is not happy about all this, and warns folk to read EULAs properly, and look carefully at what they may be installing. Sad thing is, folk like Plaxo, which I’ve talked about at length here, don’t seem to get that they have to work really, really hard not to play similar tricks in their yearning to get viral. Lesson to marketers: Don’t treat customers like idiots, just because, confronted by free software and the chance to see software billionaires being hit by Belgian desserts, we behave like them.

News: Tag Me Up, Scotty

By | November 24, 2011
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 Interesting article from Wired on a technology called Hypertags from the UK. Starting this month, Londoners will be able to point their handphones or personal digital assistants (PDAs) at posters in cinemas and get back links to web pages. The idea is not a bad one, although I’m not sure how exciting that particular example is. A better use of the technology appears to have been last year’s demo at the Tate Modern museum in London where visitors could download snippets of information about the exhibits as they looked at them. The smart tags can be attached to anything — advertising panels, billboards or walls — and customers wielding gadgets equipped with infra-red or Bluetooth can download a small program to utilize the service.
 
 
Hypertag promise improvements such as visual recognition, where users point their phone at a magazine or newspaper article and be linked to a Web page. TV viewers could point their phones at a television program, they say, and access related Web pages. Hmmm. I like the idea in general, in that it’s theoretically less intrusive than the usual sort of phone pitching-at-you-where-you-are thing, but a) all this big content stuff depends on the phone becoming a virtual Internet browser and b) I feel they may be missing the bigger opportunity here. Surely this kind of thing should be used in shops where you can glean more information about what you’re about to buy by pointing your device at it — whether it’s cabbages or a DVD burner — and making the best use of the phone’s selling points: its mobility, its size, its connection to instant data. Who wants to visit the movie homepage when you’re in the cinema foyer? Or am I missing something?

News: Don’t Laugh, Your Email’s Coming

By | November 24, 2011
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 Not sure whether to laugh or cry at this one. Or tiptoe quietly away. Researchers at Australia’s Monash University, the New Scientist reports, are working on software that would that automatically log you onto the nearest computer by listening out for your voice, or laugh, or footsteps. Microphones on each computer, Rachel Nowak writes, would pick up a person’s voice, or listen for familiar footsteps coming or going. The software would then recognise them and calculate where they are, using flocks of ‘intelligent agents’ – pieces of computer code that move from computer to computer. “The agents,” she writes, “close in on those computers where the person’s voice is loudest, until they pinpoint the nearest one.”
 
The agents — or sneaky little tattletales, depending on your point of view — would, upon realising that you were heading towards the Mars Bar dispenser, deliver your email to the nearest computer, or, upon hearing your rich baritone laugh by the water cooler, administer a pithy reprimand and remind you that your expenses are horribly overdue. I’m not sure I’m ready for this kind of life. We already have an accounts department.
 
 

News: How To Be A Pornographer

By | November 24, 2011
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 Further to my earlier posting about the dangers of folk hijacking your PC to send spam, here’s something from Reuters, appearing on Wired News that confirms the worst: Nearly 2,000 PCs with high-speed Internet connections have been hijacked by a stealth program and are being used to send ads for pornography. The stealth program is a Trojan called “Migmaf” for “migrant Mafia”, and Reuters quotes Richard M. Smith, a privacy and security consultant in Boston, as saying most of the PC owners likely have no idea what is happening. Smith said he suspects whoever is responsible for the Migmaf scam may be in Russia, because some e-mail addresses involved in the scheme go back to Russian servers and there are other Russian language references in some related domain names.
 
How to avoid become an unwitting pornographer? Use a firewall like Zone Alarm (there’s a free version, which should be enough for your needs) and keep your virus checker running and up to date.