The ghost of Zango toolbar has a Facebook fan page
- Friday, January 29, 2010, 14:59
- Threat Research
- 6 views
Here’s something they don’t teach in marketing 101: If you’re pushing software that no one wants -- like, say, annoying adware -- and your downloads are going nowhere, what do you do?Answer: you push somebody else's popular software and bundle your junkware with it.Remember Zango? It was that irritating adware company that spent years and a million weasel words trying to make its operation seem legitimate. It was fined $3 million in 2006 by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and it unsuccessfully sued anti-virus vendor Kaspersky in Federal Court in 2007 for calling the Zango malcode “malcode?” After several years of sagging revenue amidst a larger collapse of the adware industry, the company finally folded and sold its assets at fire sale prices last April. (Sunbelt Blog story here. )
The buyer, Pinball Publisher Network, is still distributing Zango and sadly enough it still offers users nothing of any value, which is why PPN offers Open Office, 7-Zip and Firefox bundled with it. PPN and its affiliates are simply trying to piggyback on those programs and in the process, leech from their value and good name.Here’s what its fans get:“Hotbar's toolbar for IE, Outlook/Outlook Express and Word provides FREE access to premium content including weather, paid for by advertising. Based on keywords generated by your browsing, Hotbar shows ads in a separate browser window or a temporary Slider,
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