Dead Zango installers haunt Download.com
- Thursday, April 1, 2010, 11:18
- Threat Research
This is an interesting historical quirk, more than anything else - but I thought it merited a blog post. If you've seen me rattling around the Internet pre-Sunbelt, you might be aware I have a bit of a sparring history with a company called 180 Solutions / Zango.
Or, as The Register once put it:
“…its chief tormentors - Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, and Chris Boyd, former security researcher at Facetime Security - continued to document evidence of malpractice by Zango years after the FTC settlement.”
Anyway. While looking for random things to play with on Download.com, I noticed this:
A nice collection of Zango files. Quite a few installs too, from the looks of it with one program alone totalling 2,326 downloads. All of the files were added on 10/01/2004, which could either be the 10th of January or the 1st of October, depending on whether or not you’re a confused Englishman like myself.
Here’s an obligatory close up shot of one of the pages:
“In exchange for free access to games, users are shown 2–3 websites while browsing online”. All of the Zango files offered up are pretty tame, but (continue reading...)