Spyware & Pay Per Click

[Eric S]

Well last night my dad's computer was really messed up. Turns out it was infected with spyware and other goodies.

So anyways I was cleaning the computer up and noticed that when this computer was infected it affected Internet Exployer real bad. I have included some screen shoots of the results.

Basicly I typed in one of our websites and preceeded to click on the link. In this case it was our info page on our orangecountyflowershop.com website.

However instead of going to the actually site it went to pages where PPC is in place including my favorite rip off company area connect. You will also notice some OG flower sites came up. I also found it going to some "WELL KNOWN" sites but since I didn't gat the screen shots and can't mention (900) or (TDF).

So check it out can you imagine thousands of peoples computers infected with this stuff and basicly say your customer looking for your shop name clicking the webiste and then either going to a "Compeditors site" or going to a website that has PPC on it with of course your own shops PPC that they end up clicking on it.

So any words of advice? Should this become a blog post and if so can any of you web people give me some insight so I can create content rich post.

The images are in order by what I typed in on yahoo and showing the results page. The 4th link down (my info page) is what I clicked on. Everytime I duplicated the resuts and cliked on the same link the destination pages cam up. I was able to get some of the screen shots of the redirecting URL as well including "adservices10.enhance.com" and "Partners.mama.com". Some of the other results also redirected me to INFO.com and even MSN.

 

[ivygreen]

Eric, how did you fix this? I have this problem and somtimes it directs me to sites a day old. For example flowerchat, without any new posts. It also shuts down attempts to remove it.

 

[RJD]

This has been a problem for years, and you're lucky it was only flower site showing up. Often, they're porno loaders.

This illustrates the need to keep oneself protected. #1, install and keep updated an anti-spyware software such as Windows Defender or Lavasoft. #2, don't install stupid crap! These infections enter through browser toolbars or screensavers or crap like that. In some cases, removal can be next to impossible, requiring reinstallation of Windows.

The main premise of your post Eric should be something like "if they're this sleazy in bringing you to their site, do you really want to do business with them"? Did yo uhappen to catch the name of the programs you removed?

 

[Eric S]

The real reason for the post

My concern is that these programs basically where trying to get the user to either click on Pay Per Click Ads or directing the user to a different site. In this case I was clicking on one of my websites and sent me to serveral other flower websites.

Is order gathering that far advanced that they would or could be creating Spyware that would not only direct a customer away from your site but also at the same time cost you more money by making the customer click on your PPC that was being paid for.

I have been very sucperious of Area Connect and this is the first proof that I have of shading dealings. I am sure that whom ever created the spyware didn't just pick out a random site. Every single one of the clicks that I created sent me to either a Order Gathering site or some form of PPC.

Think about it a customer is trying to get to a website and over and over trying to click on the website resulting in more PPC. And it wasn't like these sites only came up once. I did this for about an hour and saw these sites appear more then one time.

Addressing IVY psot To resolve this problem I had to update the mcafee software (It was expired on my dads computer) and also installed spyware removal software to remover the problems.

 

[theRKF]

Not an OG in this case ... it's a BlackHat affiliate trick. They forcefully redirect traffic to their AdSense (or other ad network) ads and collect on every click.

If they get busted, they will just pop up with a new account. It's a short-term get all the $$$ you can before getting shut down mentality.

Ryan