p2pnet news view Freedom| Security | P2P:- “Why not bring this subject up with a lawyer and sue McAffee for defamation and so forth?”

That’s p2pnet reader few bux in a comment post to my story McAfee targets p2pnet. Again.

Biggie ’security’ company McAfee is implying p2pnet is a dodgy site with spyware and malpractice downloads, and it [McAfee] is doing so to promote its [McAfee's] so-called SiteAdvisor ’service’.

Nor is this the first time. The company made exactly the same accusations last year.

“You know how it works,” I responded to few bux. “Lawyers cost lots of money and I don’t have any.”

Said another Reader’s Write, “McAfees’s Siteadvisor is also being sued by 7Search, a site once considered to be a big distributor of forced Active-X drive-by downloads, over being tagged as spyware: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/28/7search_sues_mcafee/.”

Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, “If there’s an adventurous lawyer out there who’d like to take McAfee on for p2pnet (and unlike 7Search, p2pnet doesn’t have “past ties to a notorious piece of spyware,”) I’d really like to hear from her/him on the understanding all fees would have to come from any award/settlement. I’m at p2pnet @ shaw dot ca.”

Then, further down, “Jon,This may be a case of SLANDER OF TITLE,” says another comment post, adding,  “Check here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slander_of_title”.

So I did, and saw »»»

In law, slander of title is normally a claim involving real estate in which one entity falsely claims to own another entity’s property. Alternatively, it is casting aspersion on someone else’s property, business or goods, e.g. claiming a house is infested with termites (when it is not), or falsely claiming you own someone else’s copyright (what allegedly occurred in the SCO v. Novell case). Slander of title is a form of jactitation.

Eric Goldman has also picked up on the 7Search case in his Technology & Marketing Law blog, writing, among other things »»»

 I don’t have a good sense of how many lawsuits have been filed against anti-spyware vendors for classifying third party software as “adware” or “spyware.” I’ve blogged on a few (including Kaspersky, PC Tools and Symantec v. Hotbar), and Ben Edelman maintains a larger catalog of such lawsuits (not sure how up-to-date this is). However, I don’t know if these lawsuits are relatively rare (as Ben’s chart implies) or if they are multitudinous but most quietly fly under the radar screen.

If there aren’t many unpublicized lawsuits, that may reflect that suing an anti-spyware vendor over its classification decisions almost never makes sense. First, many vendors have a private adjudicatory/appellate process that resolves many potential disputes without a lawsuit. Certainly, most vendors don’t want to make errors, which undermines their own credibility, and most reputable vendors want to fix their mistakes. Second, lawsuits bring generally unwanted publicity to the plaintiff, calling extra attention to their alleged deficiencies and bringing out all of the gripers. Third, the costs of the lawsuit may be more than the value of any frustrated transactions. Finally, many of the lawsuits have low probabilities of legal success for the reasons I’ll discuss in a moment. So there is good reason to believe classification-related lawsuits such as this one are rare. (I’m not saying that grumbles or C&Ds are rare; I’m just referring to formal lawsuits).

In this lawsuit, 7Search says that it was in the toolbar business but stopped offering downloads from its site in 2003. However, McAfee’s SiteAdviser gives 7Search the big red X and says “Feedback from credible users suggests that downloads on this site may contain what some people would consider adware, spyware, or other potentially unwanted programs.” 7Search claims that this statement is false because it isn’t offering any downloads at all. 7Search thus alleges false advertising (Lanham 43(a)), deceptive trade practices, defamation and unfair competition.

I’m not offering downloads either, and I never have.

So now, no longer tongue-in-cheek, I’m seriously asking if there’s a lawyer willing to represent me and p2pnet against McAfee, with the same award/settlement provisos as above? I’m at p2pnet @ shaw dot ca.

Or, class action, anyone?

‘I can tell you what’s going on …’

But I’m not the only victim.

“Click the link and next to a Big Red Danger Button with a Big X in the middle you read, ‘When we tested this site we found links to antispyware.com, which our analysis found to be suspicious’,” said my McAfee story, going on:

“Suspicious? What, precisely, does that mean? Suspicious of what?  Suspicious in what respect?

“Antispyware.com has been a supporter of p2pnet for a long time and to the best of my knowledge, there’s nothing even vaguely suspicious about it.”

In the first comment post, “So I was looking into this, and I can tell you what’s going on with AntiSpyware.com being suspicious,” says Josh, continuing »»»

AntiSpyware.com has an affiliate program for which they allow people to sell some of their products at huge markups. They use a service called ClickBank, which is notoriously used by malware writers throughout the world. Essentially, a spyware company will set up an antispyware or antivirus product which is full of fake detections and allows for free installs for scan only, and then sells the removal product. However, the scans are all faked. I’m not saying this is what AntiSpyware.com does. However, they sell their product right along side these vendors on ClickBank. Many botnet controllers will sign up at ClickBank, and then in turn force installs of the free scan only antivirus into all of their infected computers with their affiliate ID (getting a few cents for each install), and then if anyone buys the repair product, they get an even bigger cut. So, essentially AntiSpyware.com is joining this sort of filth by selling their free product along side these other malicious products. McAfee has called them suspicious by association, and hasn’t yet determined whether antispyware.com is legit or not. Honestly, I’m not sure myself yet.

So I asked Chris over at AntiSpyware to give us his views, and here’s his response »»»

 It’s late and we’ve been preparing for Gustav, so I’ll be brief.

My friend Jon at p2pnet.net alerted me to the discusions about SiteAdvisor. I have my own thoughts about the fundamental flaws with the concept of SiteAdvisor, but I won’t go into them now.

But I WOULD like to clarify some of the issues brought up about Antispyware.com, affiliate advertisers and Clickbank.

The main problem is affiliate advertising has become a highly competitive business and pay per click ads are expensive.

Many sites pay affiliates 70-75% commissions but even with that, most affiliates don’t make a profit.  The affiliates that make a lot a money do so because they constantly monitor their ads and research new ones.

As far as Clickbank being a haven for malware writers isa concerned, this may have been true in the past, but it certainly isn’t the case now, and I don’t know of any current examples.

Any company using clickbank is held responsible if too many customers complain, or there’s a suspiciously high refund rate.

Currently, Clickbank has more than 10,000 publishers.  With that many companies generating revenue, it’s not in their best business interests to risk promoting malware makers, even if they wanted to, which they don’t.

That’s why Rogue antispyware companies usually have their own payment system.

Any affiliate we’ve found not following Clickbank’s terms of service, or ours, has been dealt with effectively and quickly.

We’ve also permanently blocked not only rogue affiliates, but also the keywords they used in their deceptive ads.

A lot of work goes into AntiSpyware and 24-hour research centers in the US at the University of South Alabama Research and Technology Park (http://usatechpark.southalabama.edu/parkpartners.html), as well as our offices in Bangalore, to guarantee timely database updates.

Calling it a bad product because of old rumors of Clickbank problems isn’t fair.

Antispyware.com’s goal is to market an honest service which provides an effective, easy-to-use solution to cleaning spyware.

To achieve this, we’ve built an intuitive interface, and we’ve also made sure the program runs happily on the older machines many people still use.

Check it out for yourself here: http://www.antispyware.com/register_trial.php

(Note: Most p2pnet users here will want to un-check p2p files in the settings window )

Definitely stay tuned, and if you’re a lawyer, don’t forget: I’d really like to hear from you.
Cheers! And thanks …

Jon Newton – p2pnet 

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 10:24 am and is filed under Freedom, P2P, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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