Michael Gracie

And it’s only Wednesday. In the first, DirectRevenue (spyware distributor extraordinaire) settled with the State of Illinois. No cash - just a little “changing of business practices.” Right..we’ve seen that work before.

In the second, our good man Elliot Spitzer took a chunk of flesh out of an email marketing firm (as well as $1.1 million dollars), for using collected email addresses without the addressees’ consent. Now we’re talking.
Read more »

Most in the online world have probably heard by now that Elliot Spitzer’s office is suing spyware company Intermix. But, nobody has explained very clearly how spyware vendors make their money, so I will. Spyware companies generally collaborate with their customer to deliver targeted advertising of their customers’ products. That is where the whole spying thing comes in. If you know the online user very well, even if the user doesn’t know you know them very well, then you can provide some assurance to the customer that their ad will be seen by someone that fits their target audience, and therefore their product demographics. In summary, spyware companies get paid to deliver ads, but it doesn’t end there.
Read more »

We’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again - Elliot Spitzer suing evil-doers. Yes, Elliot is at it again, this time suing spyware vendor Intermix for infecting millions of computers with redirect code, silly toolbars that do nothing, and tons of popups. Best guess is more than 3.7 installs in New York alone.

Boy I sure do wish I didn’t spend all of my time on my PowerBook and my Linux slab, or I too could see some of these neat little tricks.

Meanwhile, lets just hope Elliot has consumers best interests in mind, and has thought through all the issues before pulling the trigger on this one.