Tube-ology
April 30, 2008
I had a bad experience with my online TV listings service the other day. The listings suddenly switched to a very invasive, very dishonest ad for some bullshit computer security products. I complained, and I’m very happy to say that zap2it responded in a very positive way:
Over the weekend, a company that supplied one of our ads switched out the approved ad banner with one that redirected users to a site for SpywareDestructor.
If you were affected by this ad, your browser window would have been reduced and you would have seen a screen that “scanned” your computer and told you that it was infected with several malicious programs. After that, it prompted you to download a program to remove the spyware and viruses.
The screen that “scanned” your computer was actually a flash animation – it was fake. If you closed your browser window at this point, your computer is fine. If you downloaded the SpywareDestructor program, uninstall it via your Control Panel and remove the registry entry for ”AntiSpywareDeluxe.” (You can do this using SpyBot, http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html, which is a legitimate Spyware removal program.)
We were very disturbed by this ad switch, and pulled the campaign as soon as we realized what had happened. We are working to ensure that this does not happen again.
Thank you for your feedback!
Zap2it.com is a really decent online TV listings source. Yes, you need to set up a free account, but that’s just so you get the right listings. I’ve been using it for years and this was my first problem. I like how they handled it.
