posted on February 10, 2002 12:05:53 PM
I just read my latest Kim Komando newsletter and she had an interesting article on spyware. I downloaded a program (ad aware) she suggested and found 5 such programs on my computer. It was able to get rid of 4, but not the fifth, which was eZula.
I looked up eZula in Yahoo search. Wow! What a nasty program. I found the instructions to delete it manually and did so.
However, the problem is not so much when you have it on your computer. When people who are browsing your website have it, eZula will try to take them away from your site to a competitor (who has paid them).
I would highly recommend any one with a web site go to their favorite search engine and type in "ezula" and check out the anti-ezula sites. They have scripts you can put in your web pages to prevent ezula from stealing your customers.
I put a little blurb in each of my end-of-auction notices about my web site and I don't want ezula (or any similiar programs) stealing the traffic I am building up.
posted on February 10, 2002 02:33:44 PM
Thanks for the link. I read through the page and had my browser (Netscape 4.7 on MacOS) tested. eZula does not appear to touch Mac browsers. I tested IE 5.0 for the Mac as well and it came out clean.
I agree that eZula is insidious and quite likely evil. I'm relieved I don't need to worry about it, yet.
posted on February 10, 2002 04:13:29 PM
Many people don't know this but Gator does something similar. In addition to filling forms out for you (what most people use it for) it also takes $ from advertisers to replace banner ads on whatever website you are viewing. So, let's say a tire manufacturer has paid Gator to replace a certain competitor's ads ~~ if you go to a site that has the competitor's ads, Gator will show you the ads of whoever paid them instead. They have hundreds of lawsuits against them now ~~~
