Zango Caught Lying About Targeting MySpace?

Scams

from the gee,-what-a-surprise dept

Things keep getting worse for spyware/adware firm Zango — but it appears to be mostly of their own doing. First, a security researcher spotted the fact that someone had set up a MySpace profile trying to get other MySpace users to include videos on their MySpace profiles that just so happened to sneakily install Zango. This, of course, is from the company that claims it’s completely against sneaky installs and has the technology to stop such “rogue” installs… even though they don’t actually seem to stop them. In response to this discovery, besides taking some cheap shots at the researcher who was helping them by pointing out this “rogue” distributor, Zango claimed that they don’t target MySpace. Specifically, a spokesperson from the company said that the profiles were created by an employee, but were a mistake: “he didn’t realize it was Zango business practice not to target MySpace. He should not have been doing this, and we want to tell MySpace that we didn’t mean to target them.” Apparently, however, that was news to some Zango affiliates. They’ve now shown the original security researcher emails from Zango telling them how to target MySpace with its adware and how to try to get popular MySpace users to embed the Zango-infested videos into their MySpace profiles as well. In other words, not only was it Zango practice to target MySpace, they actively encouraged affiliates to do so. Given the company’s history, it’s not surprising that they would be caught saying one thing publicly while doing something entirely different — but it’s still amazing that they thought no one would catch them in this lie.