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Gator |
Or let me put it this way: combine the name Gator with the worst swearing words you know at any web forum (chatroom, message board, maillist...) and you'll have everybody joining in and cheering you on - all rules about off-topic discussions and abusive language forgotten. (It's true! I've seen it - even tried it myself!)
You should be able to find info about it all over the web, but here are the most important facts (please feel free to distribute this info any way you like):
- Gator is a so-called "spyware" (sometimes called "sleazeware") application. It runs in the background on the computer, monitors which sites you visit on the web and launches "targeted" banner ads based on what kind of sites you seem to like. Companies often use Gator to "coup" their competitors' site (for example: if you go to IBM's site, you may get popup banner ads telling you how much better Sun is than IBM). Quite often it doesn't serve the ads right away, but waits a few minutes making it harder to figure out which site "triggered" a particular banner.
- Apart from those annoying banners, Gator isn't supposed to do any harm. It does slow down the infected computer though, and there are some apparently reliable but so far unconfirmed rumours the program has actullay caused serious virus-style damage to computers running it. Not that it makes matters better, but this is certainly due to sloppy programming not to any mischievous intents from Gator. The last thing they want is to crash your computer. To them that would be like killing the hen that lies the golden eggs.
- Surprisingly, Gator seems to be legal. This is because Gator claims it's only installed on the computers of people who voluntarily downloaded it themselves.But that claim is a blatant lie because:
- Finding a security glitch in a Microsoft application (any Microsoft application) is like finding a hole in a Swizz cheese. One such hole is called "autodownload" (or something like that and is a feature(!!!) in later versions of Internet Explorer.Gator exploits that hole by placing banner ads all over the web - banner ads that look innocent, but include a code to make IE autodownload Gator. This is probably by far the most common way the application is distributed by.
- Apparently at least one of the big advertisement serving companies is in on the cheme and places Gator-infected banner ads on the sites of unsuspecting webmasters all over the web. This is probably what happened to WebRing.
- Once infected, Gator is very hard to get rid of. In theory it comes with a deinstaller (to strengthen Gator's bizzare claim that what they do is legal), but they've done everything they can to make it as hard to use as possible.The best way to get rid of the filth is to use a spyware killer application such as the free Spybot Search & Destroy.
- Gator is a problem to webmasters because we get the blame for those banner ads that suddenly starts popping up. Also, those of us who have banner ads o our own sites are less than happy about Gator stealing our visitors.
- Gator only runs on Windows. Linux, Unix and Macintosh computers are perfectly safe (from this particular piece of spyware that is).
- The autodownload function is only a problem for people who use Microsoft Internet Explorer. No other browser manufacturer is stupid enough to leave that big a hole in their security system. (I wouldn't trust Netscape completely though. You never know what new and "wonderful" bugs they can come up with.) It's enough to make a poor Windows user consider the Opera browser!
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