Probably every 2-Spyware.com visitor knows about Claria Corporation, its advertising-supported products and services. If you don’t, try to recall some of these “magic� words: GAIN, DashBar, ScreenScenes, PrecisionTime, etc. Still cannot remember? Then here is another clue – Gator. The infamous and scary name, isn’t it? It is a former name of Claria Corporation, which was responsible for adware and spyware distribution in the last few years. Now the company claims that it no longer illegally spreads advertising-supported software. Its products no longer come bundled with Kazaa, Grokster and other similar programs. Claria no longer creates advertisements that look like common Windows messages and dialogs. The corporation strives to set itself apart from numerous spyware and adware vendors and tries to create an image of a reputable and transparent Internet company. But if this is true, one might wonder: how does Claria adware gets onto user computers if its victims never visit Claria web sites and even do not know about them? Ben Edelman, reputable anti-spyware expert found the answer and posted it on his personal web site.
Ben Edelman wrote that Claria installs its software through commercial pop-ups and ActiveX drive-by downloads served by other spyware distributors. Such pop-ups and banners offer particular programs like screen savers, but do not mention Claria’s name and do not provide detailed information on software, what it does and how it behaves. Not a single word about serving pop-ups, downloading adware components and performing other actions! Clicking on such banners opens a security warning box asking to permit or cancel software installation. But again, a warning box does not contain the term “pop-ups and other ads� like it did back in April, 2005. Now it’s just “GAIN-branded ads�. Claria knows how users hate pop-ups and therefore deliberately omits mention of this term. Most anti-spyware experts including Ben Edelman say that such practice does not pass the FTC rules, which Claria strives to comply with, because advertisements that GAIN-alike applications serve are nothing more than annoying and unsolicited commercial pop-ups.
Another reason why Claria’s advertising-supported programs are still called parasites lurks in the end user license agreement (EULA), which is shown only after the user agrees to software installation that cannot be canceled later. Furthermore, the EULA is quite lengthy and most users will not read the section discussing pop-ups and advertisements, because it is not provided in the very beginning. That’s how Claria manages to trick thousands of users into installing its software.
Although Claria managed to improve its image (Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta suggests leaving its programs in the system), its advertising-supported products are still called adware parasites by most anti-spyware experts and regular users.
