The Adware Ku Klux Slam?

So, imagine the scene - you work for Zango (the right hand of 180 Solutions), you're sitting there at your desk with your nice suit and your funky belt - ding-dong! You have mail! Now, I've no idea why their email alert noise sounds like a doorbell, but anyhoo, let's pretend the mail reads something like this:

Hi! My Amazingracist website is screwed! I want these idiots to download movies of me walking into a black guy's shop dressed as a KKK member, but they found by going back a page they can get all the vids without installing your software! What's up with that? My affiliate number is x,y and z and my website is

T H E A M A Z I N G R A C I S T.

See how I not only made the domain name bold, but italic, and threw in a whole bunch of colours too? See how the domain just leaps off the page? Isn't that nice? Doesn't it make you feel good?

Unfortunately, Sparky the guide dog must have been off sick that day, because whoever this guy's Zango contact is can't really be commended for doing a top notch job. let me see - either Zango's ticket system needs more jiggawatts because it is, in fact, based in the past and Doc Brown is trying to send it Back to the Future, or it DOES give you vague information like, you know, what the WEBSITE IS CALLED, and they actually bother to CHECK THE CONTENT before scanning a troubleshoot list and happily firing the answer back to the clown at the other end.

Ding-dong! Ah, I see - it's not a door bell, it's a FRIGGING WAKE UP CALL.

Look here - the idiot who runs that racist website is putting it up for sale, and what a tidy profit he stands to make! Not only him, but (for as long as it continues) 180 Solutions and whoever else ends up buying the site! Wait a minute - 180 Solutions complain about being flagged as Spyware, but their utterly useless quality control is free to let the equivalent of Internet Leprosy profit from racism and (should we complain about it), we'll all be dismissed as - yawn - zealots?

Let me guess - once again, those stupid antispyware zealots aren't doing a top-notch job, because if those so-called "security experts" were any good, they'd have policed us a whole lot better and found this a whole lot sooner. Yeah, right. Perhaps 180's legal team would be better served driving Mr Internet Racist into a dark, dank hole instead of pursuing Zone Labs over some stupid wording nobody cares about.

Think that has a detrimental effect on your business?

WHAT ABOUT THIS?!?

In case you haven't seen the Sunbelt post on this yet, or the original find at Castlecops.com, feel free to check out the video from Eric L. Howes over at Spywarewarrior.com (and thanks to Eric for the use of the screenshot). As for 180 - well, let's say it again - why are they waiting to switch off all these scumball installs until the new year? Can they guarantee that this won't happen again? Of course they can't.

Just like Direct Revenue, who claimed their new affiliate model would solve all their problems, it'll likely fall apart after the first five minutes.

I've been sickened by numerous crappy installs lately - and I'm sick of listening to the same tired excuses, the same empty promises, the same "oh yeah, that's awful, we'll sort it out now, it's not our fault, we just give the software to the affiliates, we can't police them all, we can't keep track of them, thanks for the help catching these guys and NOW WE'RE GOING TO SUE YOU!" Wonderful.

I'm going to have a lie down now, before my brain explodes.