MarketScore

Thank goodness all those spam postings stopped! * relief *

Either you have the speed available to you or you don't. No program can make faster what you don't have.

Like my mamma always told me, if it looks like Spyware, smells like spyware, tastes like spyware, it's spyware.

They made their money and ran. Bastards.

Traffic redirected through their servers? The must have a hell of a lot of bandwidth if they want to do that at least somewhat successfully

From Marketscore's site:

"We are committed to describing what information we collect about our panelists and their Internet usage, how we collect this information, the steps that we take to protect the information provided to us, and the use we make of this information."

...which means spyware! Stop kidding yourself MarketScore...

He's trying to suggest that because I install the product willfully it can't be spyware.

But they're luring me in with promises of speed and web-security, when their real motivation is marketing cash.

Part of the reason it's so hard for lawmakers to legislate this stuff, because they're all hung up on what to call it.....

It's not that the program itself is spyware..it's that it redirects all traffic through it's own servers where it could be monitored/viewed/recorded....etc.

Baaaaaad idea.

quote:

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They made their money and ran. Bastards.

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Actually I think thanks in part to this community and the community at Scam.com, we got them shut down before they could deliver the real pitch.

If they say it isn't spyware, that means it is.

Just like when I get email that says "This is not spam." Well, maybe it's not the salty canned meat product, but it is still spam!

It may be done in a similar manner to other "internet acceleration" plans, such as Propel, that uses an edge-based caching network of servers. Only in this case (I assume, based on the story description), they are logging the URL requests for marketing purposes. (As far as I am aware, Propel is legitimate and doesn't do that.)

Anyone remmeber a video player called Radlight that was removing programs like Adaware when you installed it? An admin on the forums (some insist an employee or owner) had this to say about it:

quote:

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But take a closer look at the "spyware" programs. e.g. SaveNow.
SaveNow HELPS people when bying over the internet. You want to buy
a pack (a few hundreds) of recordable CDs.... searching on the net..
AH, here...Oh, wait a moment, a popup window appears. When I click
on the popup-window I can buy a pack of my favourite CDs and save
up to 15% That's cool. I would even call it "HELPWARE". I'm happy.
I got my CDs, some people got some money and everyone is happy.

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Original Slashdot article. Search for "helpware" to see the full posting.

In essence, I think anyone would still call it spyware. The software does nothing but redirect traffic through there own servers.

Well it has been banned on Indiana campus where I go to school. I work for the campus IT services and anyone with he program running will be automatically banned from the campus network.

Cool Web Search claims he's not spyware too.

Well.. if they say it' snot spyware... then its just SNOT um.. er.. un.. well.. I mean.. PERCIEVED SPYWARE excuse me whilest I wipe my nose on thier PERCEVED SPYWARE.... Bout the only thing it might even be good for..... Bad script kiddies... bad

I'm a first-year law student, and have just been investigating one of Marketscore's projects. Almost all U.S. law students sign up with LexisNexis and Westlaw, the two major Web-based legal research services. It seems that Lexis has been giving all of these students' e-mail addresses to Marketscore, who spams them repeatedly with offers of payment for installing the Marketscore software. (Lexis' privacy policy does seem to allow this.) According to my school's Lexis representative, this is a Lexis market research project which they have contracted out to Marketscore. I just got this information from him a couple of days ago, and am awaiting another reply to make sure that I'm interpreting it correctly.

The program that's targeting law students is being marketed as the "JD Academic Research Council." Marketscore's name is only on the domain name registration; I would not have been able to trace it back to Lexis if not for the fact that I signed up for my Lexis account using a unique e-mail address. The spam from Marketscore, under the JDARC name, says only that "you are receiving this email because your information is listed in publicly-available directories or you opted to receive promotional emails from services such as ours."

i'd call it malware before i'd call is spyware...they aren't installing thing's without people knowing it, they're just misrepresenting it.

While I agree that accelerators don't make your connection any faster, I will say that my wife and I rely on the one that is provided by Earthlink. Without it, normal browsing would take much more time instead of the mintues it does now. While it doesn't do anything for downloads, which in all honestly I wish it did, it does accelerate regular web browsing, which is it's intention.

isn't so much that it's an accelerator, but that Marketscore intercepts *https* traffic, something no other web accelerator I know of does. All web accelerators I know of -- save for Marketscore -- don't touch https traffic at all and only handle regular http. According to other reports, such as PC World's at »www.pcworld.com/news/art ··· 7,00.asp , Marketscore actually inserts itself into https connections in a manner that is no different than a malicious "man in the middle" attack on SSL or SSH traffic. That sort of approach basically breaks the security of https connections, and IMO is *WORSE* than the average spyware.

-SC

I think you should take a look at the thread on this in the security forum.

About 3 Years ago, I signed up with a company called E-Trends »www.e-trends.com//Home.aspx. All they do (from what I can tell), is record the websites that you visit for statistical purposes. No ads were thrown to my machine, no annoying e-mail, etc. The best was that, every 3 months or so, I would get a check for $15. By the way, I always got a check...and still do to this day every 3 months.

About a year or so ago, when I got my check in the mail, there was a letter indicating that MarketScore was now going to be a part of E-Trends (in fact, you can see this on their web site).

So, I guess what I'm wondering is this.....what is so bad about having a company record what web sites you visit, and then PAY you for your service?

I don't see anything wrong with that at all. Also, since MarketScore took over, I have yet to see any ads, or anything odd running on my machine. Only change is that I use a proxy server of their's. What's so bad about using a proxy server? Most companies (including the one I work for), run a proxy server.

I would be cautious if I were you. If e-trends is now the parent company to MarketScore as your wording suggests, I would be very worried about their ethics. You should refer to this thread on the security forum, where you'll see what MarketScore's been doing:

»Universities grapple with SSL-busting spyware

Do you know anything about how the Google Desktop Search tool works with regards to its interaction with HTTPS connections? I know that it is able to monitor and index then, the same as any other, presumably via the LSP that they install into the networking stack. Do you think that it also offers the same sort of security risk as MarketScore does?

I just use MarketScore proxys to surf pr0n sites cause all the other ones stop working after a week. IP 69.69.69.69 is downloading purely pr0n! What a surprise!