ALBANY, N.Y. - Unwanted software slithered into Patti McMann's home computer over the Internet and unleashed an annoying barrage of pop-up ads that sometimes flashed on her screen faster than she could close them. Annoying, for sure. But the last straw came a year ago when the pop-ups began plugging such household names as J.C. Penney Co. and Capital One Financial Corp., companies McMann expected to know better. Didn't they realize that trying to reach people through spyware and its ad-delivering subset, called adware, would only alienate them? "It irritated the heck out of me," said McMann, a 45-year-old former corporate executive from Klamath Falls, Ore. "It took a week to take off every little piece of crap that was put on my computer. Every time I rebooted, it started to come up again." Pop-up ads carried by spyware and adware aren't just employed by fringe companies hawking dubious wares — such as those tricky messages that tell you your computer has been corrupted. You can count some big tech companies among its users, including broadband phone provider Vonage Holdings Corp., online employment agency Monster Worldwide Inc. and online travel agencies Expedia Inc., Priceline.com Inc. and Orbitz LLC. These companies acknowledge they've used adware to reach potential customers, though they say they shun any programs that monitor online surfing or extract personal information. Even Fortune 500 companies have turned to adware: Sprint Corp. for its PCS mobile phones, major banks peddling Visa credit cards, Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news). and retailers including Circuit City Stores Inc. And Mercedes-Benz USA had its cars flashing on consumer's computer screens before the company, fielding complaints, put on the brakes. Repeated requests to Capital One about its use of adware pop-ups weren't returned. J.C. Penney spokesman Quinton Crenshaw said Friday the retailer stopped using adware less than a year ago and never used spyware, but does use "cookie-base advertising." Spyware and adware often land on computers without their owners' full knowledge, hitching a ride during visits to porn and gambling sites or in downloads of free games and screensavers. Often, the payload arrives with downloads of cartoon-character wares aimed at children. Infected computer users can get barraged with pop-up ads and find the unwanted programs difficult to remove. So far, law enforcement has mostly targeted the transmitters. Intermix Media Inc. has agreed to pay $7.5 million in a tentative settlement of a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. But Spitzer isn't stopping there. He is threatening to hold accountable household-name advertisers that use adware networks. No longer, says Spitzer, can companies play dumb. That's making many advertisers nervous, though they insist they work with subcontractors and often don't know about any adware use until they get a complaint. "There's plausible deniability at each tier," said Chris King, product marketing manager at anti-spyware vendor Blue Coat Systems Inc. Big-time online advertising is built on layers: A big advertiser, such as a Fortune 500 company, directs an agency to handle a campaign. The agency then farms that message out to specialists in various media, which can include spyware and adware purveyors. "We do everything we can to make sure our partners adhere to our standards," said Jeffrey Citron, Vonage's chief executive. Yet a pop-up ad for Vonage appeared in a screen shot that Spitzer used in his case against Intermix. Citron said he was unaware of the ad and promised to look into it, as he said the company does with similar complaints. Mercedes-Benz says its ad was carried to hard drives last year by an agency it has since fired, while computer maker Dell USA has fired "a handful" of affiliates for carrying Dell's coupons and ads over adware. "This is not a practice we condone," said Dell spokeswoman Jennifer Davis. Dave Methvin, chief technology officer with tech diagnostic site PC Pitstop, said problems are no surprise given the many layers involved, but big advertisers have the clout to stop them. "If you're going to be a good corporate citizen, part of your responsibility is to make sure that kind of thing doesn't happen rather than to say it's three levels down," Methvin said. "If a big company advertising on the Internet makes all of its suppliers down the chain sign a statement (and agree to penalties for breaking the rules), quickly the problem would go away." It's not just big advertisers who have ties to spyware and adware. Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) made a deal with adware company Claria Corp., formerly known as Gator Corp., to provide search listings for its SearchScout toolbar. The popular search engines Ask Jeeves and Google also benefit from adware, says Internet researcher Benjamin Edelman. He says an Ask Jeeves toolbar generates ads without users' full consent, while Google's search listings appear in queries made through a questionable third-party toolbar. Ask Jeeves and Google officials dispute Edelman's account and say they don't use any spyware or adware. Company policy bans the use of adware by Google, said spokesman Barry Schnitt. Several states have adopted anti-spyware bills, and the U.S. House approved two in May that carry jail sentences of up to five years in prison. The bills, which don't target advertisers, are now before the Senate, where similar legislation died last year. While Spitzer and some lawmakers in Alaska, Pennsylvania and Utah say advertisers should also be held accountable, not everyone agrees. "So many people have such antipathy toward adware and spyware vendors that it blinds them to the underlying legal principles," said Eric Goldman, a cyber law professor at Marquette University. He said any liability would be unprecedented and would be akin to holding an advertiser responsible for libel by the newspaper in which the ad appears. Some advertisers defend the practice. "It is just a marketing tool that we use," said Expedia spokesman David Dennis. Expedia, like many other adware users, insists it has rigorous standards and checks to make sure customers want their ads and can easily remove the software if they don't. Dennis said the company works closely with its ad agencies to make sure. Melinda Tiemeyer, spokeswoman for Sprint PCS, said Internet users have clicked on ads delivered by adware, meaning they find them useful. Sprint is OK with using adware because users, she said, accept it in exchange for phone service offers and discounts. But other advertisers including Netflix Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. have changed their attitudes. "I think it was more of a realization that this was becoming more of a concern in consumers' eyes and there was a growing level of frustration," said John Bonomo of Verizon, which discontinued adware last July. Still, "it was effective," he said. "Clearly folks are uncomfortable about it," Edelman said. "Everyone knows that everyone hates pop-ups ... eventually companies just got embarrassed, especially when they get on your computer through this kind of trickery."
Written by: MICHAEL GORMLEY, Associated Press Writer
Friday, June 24, 2005
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Tiny nation aims to be 1st `cyber-island'
This tropical island off the east coast of Africa is best-known for its white-sand beaches, its designer clothing outlets and its spicy curries.
But tiny Mauritius is about to stake a new claim to fame. By year's end, or soon afterward, it is expected to become the world's first nation with coast-to-coast wireless Internet coverage, the first country to become one big "hot spot."
"If there's anyone who can do it, it's us," said Rizwan Rahim, the head of ADB Networks, the company installing the wireless radio network across the 40-mile-long island. "It's a small place, so for a wireless network it's manageable. For us, it's a test. If it's successful here, we can island-hop to [mainland] Africa."
Like many African nations, this modest country has struggled economically as the industries that underlie its economy--particularly sugar production and textile manufacturing--have run into tough global competition and declining prices. Looking for alternatives, the government has settled on a new and ambitious vision: Turning sleepy Mauritius with its endless sugar cane fields and tourist beaches into a high-tech computer and telecommunications center.
"It is our vision to transform Mauritius into a cyber-island," said Deelchand Jeeha, the country's minister of information technology and telecommunications, in a speech last year. The nation, he said, "is confident in the potential of [the industry] as an engine of growth which can generate jobs and wealth creation."
Remote Mauritius is in many respects well-placed to win the high-tech investment it wants. An undersea broadband fiber-optic cable, completed three years ago, gives the island fast and reliable phone and Internet links with the rest of Africa and with Europe, India and Malaysia. Many of the country's 1.2 million people--a mix of French, Indian, Chinese and African descendants--are bilingual or trilingual, speaking French, English and either Chinese or Hindi. The country is democratic, peaceful and stable.
In Ebene, just south of Port Louis, the capital, the government has built the first of three planned high-tech parks. It also has stepped up training programs to turn out tech-savvy workers and has rewritten its business rules in an effort to create an attractive investment climate. The changes are aimed at luring call centers, remote data backup facilities for companies worried about terrorist attacks and, eventually, software development companies.
`It's the future'
The government's efforts have brought in investment by players like Microsoft, Oracle, Accenture and India's Infosys Technologies and created about 2,000 jobs in the past two years.
"It's the future," said Satyam Gutty, a taxi driver in Port Louis whose daughter just graduated with a university degree in information technology. "It's a big chance for Mauritius."
That's evident at evening computer courses set up around the country by the private National Productivity and Competitiveness Council. Even in rural areas, housewives, businessmen, schoolchildren and agricultural laborers are getting their first chance to use computers, part of the government's aim of making its entire society computer-literate.
"It's something extraordinary to see people with rough hands from manual labor holding the mouse," said Oomme Narod, a senior analyst with the council. So far, 37,000 people have been trained in computer basics, she said.
That doesn't mean, however, that Mauritius is suddenly flush with skilled high-tech workers. Many of those emerging from information technology training courses are prepared to work as call center operators--but not software engineers.
Despite the government's effort to provide an inviting investment climate, regulation also remains a problem. Rahim, who applied for a license for his wireless Nomad Internet network last December, got approval only three weeks ago, three months later than expected.
The main problem, he and others say, is that the government holds a substantial share in Mauritius Telecom, the island's only fixed-line telephone operator, as well as one of its Internet providers and the company that controls the submarine fiber-optic cable that provides all of the country's phone and Internet bandwidth.
Because the government makes so much money from the company and its cable, it has been reluctant to open the market to competitors that might reduce Telecom's profits, even though the country's National Telecommunications Policy, passed in 2004, calls for "positive discrimination" by regulators in favor of start-up companies facing off against established firms like Telecom.
Threat from competitors
The government "wants to create a cyber-island but they haven't changed their regulation and infrastructure enough to create the climate," Rahim said. If Mauritius doesn't act quickly, he warned, it may well see its cyber-island idea stolen by competitor countries.
"There are policy decisions that still need to be taken," agreed Narod, of the competitiveness council. Right now, "there is improvement, but at a slow pace."
Still, Mauritius' courts have shown signs of holding the government to its competitiveness policies, which may ease the way for future investors.
"If any investor had called me three months ago and asked about investing, I would have told them to go somewhere else," Rahim said. Now, he said, "you have to come in with open eyes and an African mentality of patience, but if you persevere you can get results."
From his office window in Mauritius' new Cybertower--a sleek blue glass and gray stone tower that is the heart of the country's first high-tech park--Rahim can point out one of five new radio transmission antennas his company has installed in the last month perched beside a Hindu temple on a nearby green mountainside.
The antennas now beam his wireless Internet service over about 60 percent of the island and within range of 70 percent of its population. Business contracts for the service went on sale two weeks ago; a residential launch has been delayed only because national elections in July have eaten up all the advertising space in local media.
By year's end, he said, he hopes to have enough antennas up to cover 90 percent of the mountainous island. Getting to every last corner, he said, might take a little longer.
"We have so many sugar cane fields," he lamented, tracing the island's outline on a map.
----------
Written by: Laurie Goering Tribune foreign correspondent (lgoering@tribune.com)
But tiny Mauritius is about to stake a new claim to fame. By year's end, or soon afterward, it is expected to become the world's first nation with coast-to-coast wireless Internet coverage, the first country to become one big "hot spot."
"If there's anyone who can do it, it's us," said Rizwan Rahim, the head of ADB Networks, the company installing the wireless radio network across the 40-mile-long island. "It's a small place, so for a wireless network it's manageable. For us, it's a test. If it's successful here, we can island-hop to [mainland] Africa."
Like many African nations, this modest country has struggled economically as the industries that underlie its economy--particularly sugar production and textile manufacturing--have run into tough global competition and declining prices. Looking for alternatives, the government has settled on a new and ambitious vision: Turning sleepy Mauritius with its endless sugar cane fields and tourist beaches into a high-tech computer and telecommunications center.
"It is our vision to transform Mauritius into a cyber-island," said Deelchand Jeeha, the country's minister of information technology and telecommunications, in a speech last year. The nation, he said, "is confident in the potential of [the industry] as an engine of growth which can generate jobs and wealth creation."
Remote Mauritius is in many respects well-placed to win the high-tech investment it wants. An undersea broadband fiber-optic cable, completed three years ago, gives the island fast and reliable phone and Internet links with the rest of Africa and with Europe, India and Malaysia. Many of the country's 1.2 million people--a mix of French, Indian, Chinese and African descendants--are bilingual or trilingual, speaking French, English and either Chinese or Hindi. The country is democratic, peaceful and stable.
In Ebene, just south of Port Louis, the capital, the government has built the first of three planned high-tech parks. It also has stepped up training programs to turn out tech-savvy workers and has rewritten its business rules in an effort to create an attractive investment climate. The changes are aimed at luring call centers, remote data backup facilities for companies worried about terrorist attacks and, eventually, software development companies.
`It's the future'
The government's efforts have brought in investment by players like Microsoft, Oracle, Accenture and India's Infosys Technologies and created about 2,000 jobs in the past two years.
"It's the future," said Satyam Gutty, a taxi driver in Port Louis whose daughter just graduated with a university degree in information technology. "It's a big chance for Mauritius."
That's evident at evening computer courses set up around the country by the private National Productivity and Competitiveness Council. Even in rural areas, housewives, businessmen, schoolchildren and agricultural laborers are getting their first chance to use computers, part of the government's aim of making its entire society computer-literate.
"It's something extraordinary to see people with rough hands from manual labor holding the mouse," said Oomme Narod, a senior analyst with the council. So far, 37,000 people have been trained in computer basics, she said.
That doesn't mean, however, that Mauritius is suddenly flush with skilled high-tech workers. Many of those emerging from information technology training courses are prepared to work as call center operators--but not software engineers.
Despite the government's effort to provide an inviting investment climate, regulation also remains a problem. Rahim, who applied for a license for his wireless Nomad Internet network last December, got approval only three weeks ago, three months later than expected.
The main problem, he and others say, is that the government holds a substantial share in Mauritius Telecom, the island's only fixed-line telephone operator, as well as one of its Internet providers and the company that controls the submarine fiber-optic cable that provides all of the country's phone and Internet bandwidth.
Because the government makes so much money from the company and its cable, it has been reluctant to open the market to competitors that might reduce Telecom's profits, even though the country's National Telecommunications Policy, passed in 2004, calls for "positive discrimination" by regulators in favor of start-up companies facing off against established firms like Telecom.
Threat from competitors
The government "wants to create a cyber-island but they haven't changed their regulation and infrastructure enough to create the climate," Rahim said. If Mauritius doesn't act quickly, he warned, it may well see its cyber-island idea stolen by competitor countries.
"There are policy decisions that still need to be taken," agreed Narod, of the competitiveness council. Right now, "there is improvement, but at a slow pace."
Still, Mauritius' courts have shown signs of holding the government to its competitiveness policies, which may ease the way for future investors.
"If any investor had called me three months ago and asked about investing, I would have told them to go somewhere else," Rahim said. Now, he said, "you have to come in with open eyes and an African mentality of patience, but if you persevere you can get results."
From his office window in Mauritius' new Cybertower--a sleek blue glass and gray stone tower that is the heart of the country's first high-tech park--Rahim can point out one of five new radio transmission antennas his company has installed in the last month perched beside a Hindu temple on a nearby green mountainside.
The antennas now beam his wireless Internet service over about 60 percent of the island and within range of 70 percent of its population. Business contracts for the service went on sale two weeks ago; a residential launch has been delayed only because national elections in July have eaten up all the advertising space in local media.
By year's end, he said, he hopes to have enough antennas up to cover 90 percent of the mountainous island. Getting to every last corner, he said, might take a little longer.
"We have so many sugar cane fields," he lamented, tracing the island's outline on a map.
----------
Written by: Laurie Goering Tribune foreign correspondent (lgoering@tribune.com)
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