....Zango!

I was surprised to find 2 profiles called "Zango". Both created on the same day and at the same time, one pushed a toolbar and programs designed to "protect kids from predators".


Imagine the scene...you see this profile floating round in mySpace, decide to visit it and a pop-up launches from the mySpace page, prompting you to accept a license to play a video file. If you do, you'll be installing the Zango Search Assistant and Toolbar. Of course, in this scenario, the license agreement makes little sense to the user. It's just some random pop-up, right? If you saw this appear from a "regular" site that installs Zango Adware, then you'd at least have to click a button to bring up the license prompt. You could argue that you knew what you were getting into. On mySpace, 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.

This is done by pasting the code for the movie file into the mySpace profile and having it autoplay when you visit the page, and have the license prompt appear. Easy as pie. Now, let's think about the core audience here - I have no idea what the concrete figures are like, but mySpace is (or was) all about the kids, right? Minimum age is now 14, their "safety tips" page links to a bunch of sites for online safety. Which just makes the pre-ticked check box for the Zango installer (18 or over) even more ironic and useless than it already is when applied to a landscape like this. Of course, video files that launch Adware aren't a new thing - though creating a distribution method like this is pretty inventive.


A quick scout of the site reveals it to be (what I consider) aimed at kids, or at least, surfers of a younger nature. Yet this particular page signals the arrival of a crushing wave of Zango installs (25 videos are on that one page alone!) Even better, each one proclaims "Add this content to your page!" No doubt eager mySpace users, desperate to have some "killer content" on their sites will eagerly cut and paste this code onto their profiles, unaware that to play these things, you have to install Zango Adware on the viewer's PC.


Oh look, no mention on that page whatsoever that you'll be offering up Adware in return for putting these videos on your site. Congratulations. Looking at his "Partner Sites". "mySpace Videos", they call it. I call it, another site that's pushing a boatload of Zango with no disclosure that the users running this code will be installing Adware from their page.

I'm not providing any "live links" to these sites, because many of them popped up adverts for things such as Errorsafe.



In all cases, I didn't see one site actually mention the fact that in return for these things, you'd be pimping Zango. I just can't see how this is right, but then it's all about the money, yes?

At any rate, the situation is this - set up an affiliate deal with Zango, then systematically create a network of mySpace-themed websites designed to entice users into placing your files onto their mySpace sites. After all, why go to all the trouble of pimping your own videos when you can have random teenagers on mySpace do it for you? Talk about an all time low - an innovative method of distribution, I'll give you that. But it leaves a sour taste in the mouth, all the same.

Now, Myspace doesn't allow you to accept payment from a "third person" in return for you providing any "commercial activity" on or through the mySpace system on behalf of that third-party entity, such as "placing commercial content on your profile". I'm almost certain what's going on here is against the Terms of Service. Hey - I have Tom on my Extended Network. Maybe I'll ask him...!


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