If your PC is slow, crashing, or otherwise misbehaving, it may be because of Verizon. Or British Airways. Or one of another dozen large companies that have advertised through malware from Claria and WhenU.
Claria, formerly Gator, installs malware — specifically, "adware" that spies on your Internet browsing and pops up a window when you hit specific web sites. For example, L. L. Bean alleges in a lawsuit that Nordstrom and J. C. Penny, former Claria customers, would pop up ads for those companies when a potential customer visited the L. L. Bean web site. (Claria has sued L. L. Bean, in return, for filing a "sham lawsuit.")
How does Claria and WhenU software get onto a computer? Usually as part of installation of other software. A download of a "web browser search tool" will have a note, buried deep in the disclaimers, that the software spies on your web browsing and pops up ad windows. This makes installing the malware legal. Despicable, but legal.
In my experience, malware is one reason that people think their computers are "slowing down." I've done troubleshooting on slow computers only to find that malware (not necessarily Claria's and WhenU's) has made the computer utterly unusable. I believe that a good number of people purchase new computers because their old ones couldn't support all the malware loaded on it.
So, why blame Verizon? Verizon, by purchasing ads through Claria, helps to support the malware industry. They aren't ashamed of what they've done; their spokeman said that "it's much more efficient" than other forms of advertising. In other words, Verizon supports malware, and by doing so encourages an despicable industry that does despicable things.
Here's a list, as published in the Wall Street Journal and gleamed by me from the Claria web site, of current and former customers of Claria and WhenU:
If you have a business relationship with one of these companies, you might want to make them of your opinion of malware.
When I first thought of this category, industry blunders, I thought I'd be discussing poorly-designed user interfaces. Instead, I find myself discussing errors and mis-steps.
Our inaugural blunder comes from Nosa Eke, publisher of "Call Center Times." After sending me not just one but six copies of a piece of spam, I sent her a complaint and asked to be taken off her mailing list.
Her response? "If you have such a problem with being contacted," she writes, "have you considered removing your name as the point of contact in listings such as Buyer's Guides etc..? [sic]". Not only does she implicitly confess to harvesting my email address from a web site -- something I already knew -- she has the chutzpah to tell me that it's my tough luck. And her command of the English language makes me wonder about the magazine she publishes.
After getting more than a few more missives from her, I put here onto "autoreponse." It's a little script that I wrote that sends a couple of thousand complaint emails back to the originator, triggered by spam to me. Remarkably, she somehow managed to find the time to remove me from her list after just one autoresponse.
Nosa Eke's email address is neke@callcentertimes.com. You might want to put it on your blacklist.