Yahoo Accused of Spyware-Related Misdeeds - Typosquatting and Cooking the Books?!
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Unfortunately for Yahoo, this isn't the end of it; the behavior it is charged with gets even worse. Not only does the suit state that the search engine turned a blind eye to the abuses of its system, but all but encouraged it at certain times of the year. It says that Yahoo "knowingly...manipulated that system for their own benefit, by increasing the volume of improper advertising displays during financial reporting periods when defendants were at risk of failing to meet investor expectations." This might not be cooking the books exactly, but it strikes me that it's close enough to -- well, to get someone sued.
Another point raised by the lawsuit was the issue of ads placed in typosquatter domains. I've described this problem recently in relation to Google here. The lawsuit describes the problem explicitly in this example: "Take for example Yahoo's advertising customer Expedia.com. A user intending to visit the Expedia web site might mistype it as `expedai.com.' At 'expedai.com,' the user sees a list of ads provided by Defendants, including an ad for Expedia, along with other customers of Defendants. If the user clicks the Expedia ad, the user is taken to the true Expedia site, which is where he or she wanted to go in the first place -- without clicking an Expedia ad -- and Expedia has to pay defendants a PPC fee."
Typosquatter domains are valuable enough, and a big enough potential nuisance, that businesses will go through arbitration with the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to wrest them from control of the typosquatters. Indeed, Google won a judgment not too long ago against someone who held four domains that typosquatted on Google's good name. It was clear that Google was trying to preserve its good name in a number of ways; anyone visiting the typosquatting domains risked getting a variety of malware installed on their computer completely without their consent...including adware and spyware-related files.
The issues with advertising on spyware and typosquatted domains might be at a couple of removes now, but the idea that the search engines themselves are doing it now brings no comfort. Especially since, according to Edelman, Yahoo could have prevented this from becoming a problem. "They could have refused to partner with spyware companies. Instead, they are partnering with spyware companies and have paid out millions of dollars in advertising money to them." How much of that money might have come indirectly from you?
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