A Revolution is the Solution
Ah, the joys of Web 2.0 marketing.
Grosser than gross!
Thanks for you invesitgative work!
You know what is really sucky about this is the kids putting the Zango poisoned videos on their sites aren't making a dime but the Zango content pushers are cleaning up. 
I looked at the code that says "copy and paste to add this video to your MySpace page" and there's an affiliate ID in there, but I can't see any way the kids make any money -- just the pushers.
Here's part of the code for one:
http:// cds.zango.com/download.aspx? Id=bf265f33e036180a63a5920ded2045b3406ae13a26575e4
2dc73a200d593bf75a7004a5ed7656a351f33285651b319bb0
ee6be456bb5f93a&e=.wmv
URL broken for obvious reason. Part of that is the ID code for that video, but there has to be an affiliate ID embedded somewhere. People aren't pushing this stuff for fun and games. It's all about the $$$ as usual.
Just had a look over at M$N spaces. Searched for Zango and up came two sites. All in arabic. However when I closed the browser from one of the two sites, guess what my Firewall blocked, Zango.
Just to add it was the zango site it blocked. Just double checked my ZA firewall.
"The average user is probably going to assume it's "from Tom", and as such is perfectly safe and endorsed by Myspace. A Myspace feature or something, yes? They don't know it's being popped up via someone gaming the Adware system (again)."
Wrong. If you run unsafe executables when you don't know where they came from you are f*cking stupid and you deserve to be infected with whatever malware happens to come your way.
Do you take the same stance towards users who get hit by something like a Trojan and join a botnet, only to then start scanning for other machines to infect? Presumably you do, because they're also "stupid". I wonder if you'll take the same stance when every other machine online is a drone, simply because in part people like yourself looked down your nose and said "they deserve it". Ultimately, their problem becomes *everyones* problem.
Well said, Paperghost. W/O these "stupid" users alot of us wouldn't have jobs. When it comes down to it, we're all in it together whether a newb or leet. Malware just sucks no matter your level of expertise and I don't believe anyone "deserves" it.
Ok zango leet newb Phisher , who the hell is Tom...
Skype hax0r pwned
no wonder i dont use the net much i get so confused
Mark, the point of the post seems to be that the users don't know they're running executables at all, never mind unsafe ones. As far as they're concerned, it's just the latest thing akin to Google Video or You Tube.
"If you run unsafe executables when you don't know where they came from you are f*cking stupid and you deserve to be infected with whatever malware happens to come your way."
- Mark
So your 76 year old grandmother decides she finally feels comfortable enough to branch out from her playing of Solitaire, she finally has learned good control of the mouse and is able to click on things without making mistakes. She's feeling bold and makes her move.... Her first time on the internet.
The default home page for her grandson's browser is google. Upon being presented with google, she types in "myspace" in hopes to find Little John's page. Myspace quickly comes up and she feels accomplished. She sees a search box and searches for John's name in an attempt to pull up his page. Many results come up, and she clicks on the first one.
Bam! A popup appears that basically sums up "To fully see this page, you need to click OK at the bottom".
She does.
Now you can take two stances on this situation:
A) Con Artists taking advantage of others that are uninformed.
B) That muffin baking b*tch deserves it anyway. She should be stabbed with her own knitting needles. Stupid old hag got what shes deserved.
Ever sign a mortgage? Life insurance policy? Car insurance policy? Any lengthy contract purposely written in legaleese to confuse the people reading it?
If so, that also makes you the muffin baking b*tch that deserves it. It's 13 pages of legaleese that you agree to in good faith that the (mortgage, life insurance, myspace, whatever) company isn't going to take advantage of you or do anything borderline criminal against you. You've made the same choice as her at one time or another. Hardline elitists like yourself are also the most obvious hippocrates.
Here's your knitting needles. Go off into the wood and stab yourself and die a slow horrible death you cold heartless pompous prick.
Interestingly enough, this Zango spyware doesn't seem to install itself through any browser security holes or ActiveX; it's even more insidious, as it's delivered through Windows Media's DRM system, so users will be prompted to install the spyware even if they play the video in a non-IE browser or a standalone player.
Just one more reason to avoid Windows Media DRM like the plague... who knows what other cruft DRM licenses may be leaving behind?
Also worth noting is that some of the videos distributed by Zango are very clearly taken from other sites. It's possible, but I seriously doubt that they got the authors' permission to use them for commercial purposes...
Very interesting.. sadly MySpace is opportunist heaven and things will get worse before they get better.
This happened to me..I am very upset to be reading this...I have done everything possible to get it off...nothing is working..Can someone help..
It would be awesome if in the future you guys would list what domains this crap is coming from so I can add them to my hosts file. I've already got cds.zango and prompt.zangocash.com, are there any more?
Thanks.
ok we're dumb we admit it but the kids in the tiger cage coded some messed up stuff
Hey PG, you've been slashdotted:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.p...030250&
from=rss
I've been Boingboinged too:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/
0...myspace_us.html
Happy to see this, if your not smart enough to read the very clear pop up, then you deserve what you get. Boo-whoo no one cares that you and your kids cant use your computer.
""If you run unsafe executables when you don't know where they came from you are f*cking stupid and you deserve to be infected with whatever malware happens to come your way."
- Mark
"Happy to see this, if your not smart enough to read the very clear pop up, then you deserve what you get. Boo-whoo no one cares that you and your kids cant use your computer."
- gt1823
Right on dudes! I drive a tow-truck, and when I go to pick up some hapless soccer-mom biatch and find out her car's broke down because the timing belt broke because she hasn't replaced it in 78,000 miles I'm all "YOU SHOULD HAVE READ YOUR F*CKING MANUAL, N00-B" and I just drive my tow-truck off to the t1tty-bar laughing.
Mark, MeatMop, and gt1823: Spew in haste, repent at leisure.
MeatMop, in your particular case the carelessness of others is helping keep you employed, so you should STFU lest your find yourself hoist on your own petard. It would be karmically appropriate if your employer were to read your tirade (or people in your community, if you own your own business), and you find yourself out of a job and down at the unemployment office for help, and the job-search counselor were to lean across the desk and say, "Well, what did you think was gonna happen when you opened your pie-hole and trash-talked your customer base in a public forum, you doofus pinhead fishface?!"
Well we do get all sort in here dont we Meatmop is just one of the many types that any good Security site Attracts .
re Myspace and Zango well on the whole it dont surprise me as myspace was open to Abuse from day one ..
This is really the downside of Internet advertising - the people who want to make a buck the wrong, unethical way.
I'm all for putting ads on a legitimite site of yours if you want some income - nothing wrong with profiting from your own work, after all.
But spreading spyware/adware and reaping the affiliate benefits is really no better than setting up a pyramid scheme - screwing over other people to make money.
I had to remove Zango from a PC recently, and it wasn't fun. The uninstall option in Add/Remove programs doesn't really remove it, of course. I had to use a combination of Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D and also some good ol' Googling to remove it.
i have found the only sure way to remove any trace of Zango is to also delete all Restore files from the affected system as the newest version of zango seems to hide in multiple restore files
...guess I didn't imply the level of sarcasm I thought I did.
I was making fun of arrogant jerks like Mark and gt1823 (which, btw, looks like an ancient Georgia Tech student I.D.) who scorn the mistakes made by naive internet users.
My point is that they would never receive that kind of treatment from a mechanic, plumber, doctor, etc..."Mr. Smith I'm afraid you have lung cancer but that's what you get for smoking, dumbass."
MeatMop.
PS: I'm a doofus pinhead horseface, not fishface
MeatMop, it was absolutely dripping with sarcasm... and a wonderful example as well.
I'm baffled that geoffw and milligansghost couldn't see that.
It would have helped if MeatMop had *finished* making his point. As it was, his post came off like venom, not sarcasm. Sarcasm is notoriously difficult to get across in a written-word-only medium like this forum, especially if the participants know each other only slightly, if at all. True, if you have to explain that you're being sarcastic, it takes the zing out of it, but it's better to provide an explanation than to leave people with the wrong impression. IMHO, of course! 
Thanks for explaining, though, MeatMop. I have a lot of respect for truckers in general and tow truck particulars in particular (having needed a tow once when I got hit by a careless driver), and I would have found it disquieting to be left thinking that one of their number actually had that kind of attitude.
lol this is funny...i love zango and how i make money from them
I love how you didn't share your site with us 
""If you run unsafe executables when you don't know where they came from you are f*cking stupid and you deserve to be infected with whatever malware happens to come your way."
- Mark
So your 76 year old grandmother decides she finally feels comfortable enough to branch out from her playing of Solitaire, she finally has learned good control of the mouse and is able to click on things without making mistakes. She's feeling bold and makes her move.... Her first time on the internet.
The default home page for her grandson's browser is google. Upon being presented with google, she types in "myspace" in hopes to find Little John's page. Myspace quickly comes up and she feels accomplished. She sees a search box and searches for John's name in an attempt to pull up his page. Many results come up, and she clicks on the first one.
Bam! A popup appears that basically sums up "To fully see this page, you need to click OK at the bottom".
She does.
Now you can take two stances on this situation:
A) Con Artists taking advantage of others that are uninformed.
B) That muffin baking b*tch deserves it anyway. She should be stabbed with her own knitting needles. Stupid old hag got what shes deserved.
Ever sign a mortgage? Life insurance policy? Car insurance policy? Any lengthy contract purposely written in legaleese to confuse the people reading it?
If so, that also makes you the muffin baking b*tch that deserves it. It's 13 pages of legaleese that you agree to in good faith that the (mortgage, life insurance, myspace, whatever) company isn't going to take advantage of you or do anything borderline criminal against you. You've made the same choice as her at one time or another. Hardline elitists like yourself are also the most obvious hippocrates.
Here's your knitting needles. Go off into the wood and stab yourself and die a slow horrible death you cold heartless pompous prick.
IzzyCreamcheese | 07.10.06 - 2:05 pm | # "
"Mark, MeatMop, and gt1823: Spew in haste, repent at leisure.
MeatMop, in your particular case the carelessness of others is helping keep you employed, so you should STFU lest your find yourself hoist on your own petard. It would be karmically appropriate if your employer were to read your tirade (or people in your community, if you own your own business), and you find yourself out of a job and down at the unemployment office for help, and the job-search counselor were to lean across the desk and say, "Well, what did you think was gonna happen when you opened your pie-hole and trash-talked your customer base in a public forum, you doofus pinhead fishface?!"
geoffw | 07.11.06 - 4:52 pm | # "
Couldn't have said it better myself. The three in question obviously are no more "133t" than the poor little granny. You see, you three think that because youve got a slight amount of "experiance" on the internet, that anyone less experienced than you "deserves" it? deserves it? Are you f*cking retarded? I have this insideous program on my computer as we speak, and I came across this forum in a hunt to remove it. I consider myself very experienced with the Internet, and its usually very easy to spot a marketing ploy when you see one, but in this case, those bas*tards have gone a step further. While I was searching for lyrics to a song that I had recently heard, I found a promising looking website, so I clicked it. Lo and Behold, as soon as the page loaded, this "Zango" opened above it, blocking my view of the site. It claimed that I had to click "OK" (OK, not, "install", not "run") to display the webpage. I also noted that it did have TOS. I thumbed throught the terms and found nothing related to adware whatsoever. so, I thought, wth, might as well click ok. (might I add that it did seem a little strange, this whole thing.)soon enough, my firewall slides over and asks me if I should grant this access, and I, UNKNOWINGLY, allowed it. as soon as I saw a setup box pop-up, I knew something was wrong. I couldnt exit IE OR the setup box, so I yanked out my power cord and battery (laptop) because my task manager wouldnt run and nothing else worked. but, unfortuntely, when I restarted my comp, all of the programs necessary files were there. I couldnt delete them, so I tried to rename it, THEN delete it, which caused an even stranger effect. It appears that if you rename the file, it will clone the original and place it in that folder as well, which makes deleting it useless too. So Ive got the whole folder McAffee Quarantined but I dont know how well thats gonna work. The point Im getting at is, Im not an old granny, and Im certainly not "f*cking stupid", so maybe you three F*CKING DUMBA55ES should rethink your little rants.
To say that anyone deserves to be infected with this shite is completely anal and was probably written by total freaking idiots who don't know what they are talking about or have nothing better to say other than big themselves up - twats!.
Earlier I was looking for a program that can convert cd's into mp3 files and noticed a small clip showing somebody jumping into the path of a fast moving bus with the caption "What happens next? - Click here'.
Curiousity got the better of me and I clicked the link.
A web page opened which looked much like a Google video or a youtube page with a video window with a large Watch icon in the middle.
I almost clicked it without thinking, it's only by chance that I noticed at the bottom of the browser window that there was a link to 'terms and conditions' and under it in small print it said that by clicking 'Watch' you are agreeing to the terms and conditions.
Clicking on terms and conditions opened up a small window that basically said click the Watch icon will install a browser search bar and I may from time to time receive pop up advertising.
It was at this point I closed the window and searched for Zango in google which bought me here.
Okay, so I was lucky and noticed the terms and conditions at the bottom, and this is at 1280x1024, if I had been using 1024x768, the link and info may well have been unvisible and I would have had to scroll down to see it.
Now the simple fact remains that for the inexperienced web user or kids, they would have just blindly clicked the watch icon and inadvertently installed this Zango crap!
Anyone that installs this unless they compeltely know what they are doing and really do want to install Zango are not stupid and do not deserve to be infected.
Zango should at the very least make it much clearer what people are getting into and the Watch icon should be removed. I personally hope that someone takes Zango and it's owners out as I'm getting fed up with having to clear this type of shite from friends and familys computers.
To say that anyone deserves to be infected with this shite is completely anal and was probably written by total freaking idiots who don't know what they are talking about or have nothing better to say other than big themselves up - twats!.
Earlier I was looking for a program that can convert cd's into mp3 files and noticed a small clip showing somebody jumping into the path of a fast moving bus with the caption "What happens next? - Click here'.
Curiousity got the better of me and I clicked the link.
A web page opened which looked much like a Google video or a youtube page with a video window with a large Watch icon in the middle.
I almost clicked it without thinking, it's only by chance that I noticed at the bottom of the browser window that there was a link to 'terms and conditions' and under it in small print it said that by clicking 'Watch' you are agreeing to the terms and conditions.
Clicking on terms and conditions opened up a small window that basically said click the Watch icon will install a browser search bar and I may from time to time receive pop up advertising.
It was at this point I closed the window and searched for Zango in google which bought me here.
Okay, so I was lucky and noticed the terms and conditions at the bottom, and this is at 1280x1024, if I had been using 1024x768, the link and info may well have been unvisible and I would have had to scroll down to see it.
Now the simple fact remains that for the inexperienced web user or kids, they would have just blindly clicked the watch icon and inadvertently installed this Zango crap!
Anyone that installs this unless they compeltely know what they are doing and really do want to install Zango are not stupid and do not deserve to be infected.
Zango should at the very least make it much clearer what people are getting into and the Watch icon should be removed. I personally hope that someone takes Zango and it's owners out as I'm getting fed up with having to clear this type of shite from friends and familys computers.
Commenting by HaloScan
