Thieves Are Stealing From Your Site: Protect It!
By Sunil Tanna   ©2004 All Rights Reserved

Many of you have heard about SmartTags, which is a Microsoft technology which was going to be incorporated into Windows XP, but has now effectively been dropped, at least for now. What SmartTags do is insert additional hyperlinks, not put there by the author of the web page, into the pages that users see.

For SmartTags there was an special code that you could add to your pages to tell them not to activate on your web site. You probably have heard about the anti-SmartTag metatag... this is what I'm talking about. Now I want to tell you about something even more insidious, and which represents a real threat to every single site on the web. This includes both business web sites, and non-profits such as churches, schools, government etc. There is a program called "TopText" or "ContextPro" by a company called eZula which takes this form of page hijacking to a new extreme. TopText does it does a near-stealth installation when you download certain freeware programs, including a music-sharing program known as KaZaa. KaZaa has had more than 7 million downloads, primarily from CNet.com, so it is widespread! So this is not some minor issue... Once eZula is installed on a person's system it adds a rash of yellow hyperlinks to every web page, on every single web site that the user visits from then on. Each of these yellow hyperlinks goes to one of eZula's paying advertisers. In some cases these take priority over existing links that are on that page! Worse yet the eZula program sends unknown information (which could potentially include anything that is on your PC, web pages you visit, and possibly even files on your hard-disk, or keystrokes you enter into your computer back to the eZula company). Nobody outside of eZula knows exactly what information it is sending back, and they aren't saying. Finally possibly the most horrific aspect of eZula is that it has been alleged that the uninstall program is not fully functional, and even if you do uninstall it, it is capable of reactivating itself at any time, without your knowledge or consent! I have not been able to verify if this claim is true or not, but it appears that it could be, as the uninstall program does seem to leave still active software on the user's system. eZula is a major threat to ALL web surfers, and ALL web sites. This includes both business web sites, and non-profits such as churches, schools, government etc. As I suspect most of the readers of this ezine are web site owners, I'll concentrate on the threat to web sites. Here are just a few of the reasons why you should be opposed to this program:

• If you have a business web site, it can send visitors to your competitors. For example, it turns Symantec's Norton Anti-virus web site into a giant billboard for their arch-competitor, McAfee.
• If you have a non-profit web site, it will add advertising, which may appear to users as an endorsement from you, to your web pages. I am not sure if eZula does it, but a similar program, Surf+ is known to add links from your site to pornographic web sites! Imagine this on a church or school site.
• If you pay for advertising, they are leaching traffic from your web site and the advertising links that lead to it. Effectively they are robbing your advertising campaign of its full benefits.

I have published a web page specifically on this topic, including possible legal, technical and consumer-pressure measures that you can take to fight this. I urge you to use every legal and ethical means at your disposal to fight this program, and get as many other web sites, media organizations, and other people involved as you can possibly can. If you don't have time to explore all the options on my list, at least consider adding a link to this page on your web site, or you ezine, or in your e-books. My web page about eZula is:
http://www.suniltanna.com/ezula.html
There is also extensive discussion on eZula at geek/talk, especially in the Money Making Forum. Geek/Talk is currently on a temporary URL at:

http://www.g17.com/
If you are not sure what I am talking about, and want to see screenshots of what eZula does to various web sites, go take a look at the "SCUM!! Screen Captures" forum in Geek/Talk.

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