Real Life Internet Evil: Ezula

Our purpose with this series is to use real life examples of
deception, fraud and other evil to show how you can better
protect yourself. The examples cited in these articles are
intended to demonstrate best practices and recommendations.

If you were worried about Microsoft's smart tags, then perhaps
you should read this article. Whereas you could argue that
Microsoft didn't have the best of intentions with smart tags,
at least they provided a way for webmasters to prevent them
showing on their pages.

On the other hand, Ezula (and it's product TopText) is the
scum that scum wipes off scums feet. The company is evil. While
they are not in the same league as Osama Bin Laden (who needs to
be volunteered to a special project to determine the effects
of nuclear missles on human flesh), they are evil. With them,
though, the best "nuke" is to ignore their pitch
and never install the product. If you've got it, remove it
immediately. It's simple and and obvious.

Here's what Ezula does. They sell users on some exaggerated
benefit (much like that other scum product called Gator) and
use this to get their product installed on the user's computer.
In this case, Ezula "gives" their users something almost
identical to smart tags.

The product basically scans HTML pages as they are loaded
onto a system, looking for keywords. When it finds a keyword,
it replaces it with a special link to the page (or pages) of
a page advertiser (along with some links to content of some
kind - that's the "benefit" that gets people to install the
silly product).

Let's take an example. Pretend you want to sell tires, so you
purchase the Ezula rights to the keyword "tires". Now, every
time any web page of any Ezula user loads it is scanned for the
word "tires". Ezula replaces those with links to your site -
even if it is the site of one of your competitors! Or even a
site about how people get tired ("he tires easily") or anything
like that.

Here's what they tell the users (the poor suckers who download
this excrement): "eZula, Inc. is a leading provider of real-time
contextual Internet solutions. eZula's flagship product TopText
iLookup is the premier personal Internet reference and
simplification tool, empowering millions of Internet users with
an easy way to retrieve relevant information and simplify
Internet Navigation."

Sound's great, doesn't it? Man, if that's all you read you'd run
to download this garbage. But wait, read more of the website. Go
to the advertisers section and you will read, "eZula's platform
leverages the content that the user is viewing in real time and
turns key phrases, that best describe the advertiser, into a
global advertising opportunity that drives qualified traffic to
the advertiser from anywhere on the Web."

They further describe, "ContextPro™, eZula's Contextual Keyword
Platform, puts you in front of millions of Internet Users,
wherever they are on the Web, and enables you to reach them,
based on the Context of every Web page that they are viewing in
real time."

Here's an analogy. Suppose you were a webmaster and had a product
to sell. You spend your good money creating a beautiful brochure
which you are going to pass out at the local mall. The brochure
includes some helpful content and some advertisements of your
product. You are proud of it because you've put your heart and
soul into it's creation and you expect to make a few sales as
well.

Now as you walk around the mall handing out your brochure, some
sleazy guy in a trench coat is following you around. Once in a
while, as you give the brochure to someone, he steps in front of
you, takes the brochure out of your hands, pulls out a pen and
makes a few changes. He crosses out a few words, writes in some
new advertisements (along with some "content" to make it seem
legitimate), then hands it off to the person you were giving it
to. Worse yet, you don't see this happening and as far as you
are concerned the end user received your brochure with your ads.
Only it's been changed without your knowledge or permission.

You, the webmaster, have no control over these links. They could
be competitors. They could be the links of pornographic sites (I
couldn't find anything on the Ezula site which excluded such
sites). They could be links to sites which you disagree with for
ethical, moral, religious, racial or any number of other reasons.
The point is you (the webmaster) have no control over the links
from YOUR site. To the user, these appear to be YOUR links.

In fact, they will be sites of people and companies who are
unethical and scummy enough themselves to sink to this level of
advertising. They will be the sites of any company which is
willing to shell out the cash.

Want more information? Check out the following site for the
whole story.

http://scumware.com/

If you want to help stop this special brand of evil, then you
can take some steps yourself. First, don't install the product
on your computer systems. If you've already installed the thing,
then immediately uninstall it.

Second, if you do have a problem with this form of scum, then by
all means file a report with the better business bureau, write an
article of your own, send tell your friends and spread the word.
You might also send an email to the advertisers who purchase this
"service" (if you installed the product you would find out who
they are) and inform them of your distaste. Be sure and point out
that you will not purchase their products as long as they
advertise in this method. The mighty dollar speaks volumes.

Finally, if you are a webmaster, you can add the following
graphic to your pages, along with a link to http://scumware.com

http://scumware.com/images/bugverysmall.gif