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Our purpose with this series is to use real life examples ofdeception, fraud and other evil to show how you can betterprotect yourself. The examples cited in these articles areintended to demonstrate best practices and recommendations.If you were worried about Microsofts smart tags, then perhapsyou should read this article. Whereas you could argue thatMicrosoft didnt have the best of intentions with smart tags,at least they provided a way for webmasters to prevent themshowing on their pages.On the other hand, Ezula (and its product TopText) is thescum that scum wipes off scums feet. The company is evil. Whilethey are not in the same league as Osama Bin Laden (who needs tobe volunteered to a special project to determine the effectsof nuclear missles on human flesh), they are evil. With them,though, the best "nuke" is to ignore their pitchand never install the product. If youve got it, remove itimmediately. Its simple and and obvious.Heres what Ezula does. They sell users on some exaggeratedbenefit (much like that other scum product called Gator) anduse this to get their product installed on the users computer.In this case, Ezula "gives" their users something almostidentical to smart tags.The product basically scans HTML pages as they are loadedonto a system, looking for keywords. When it finds a keyword,it replaces it with a special link to the page (or pages) ofa page advertiser (along with some links to content of somekind - thats the "benefit" that gets people to install thesilly product).Lets take an example. Pretend you want to sell tires, so youpurchase the Ezula rights to the keyword "tires". Now, everytime any web page of any Ezula user loads it is scanned for theword "tires". Ezula replaces those with links to your site -even if it is the site of one of your competitors! Or even asite about how people get tired ("he tires easily") or anythinglike that.Heres what they tell the users (the poor suckers who downloadthis excrement): "eZula, Inc. is a leading provider of real-timecontextual Internet solutions. eZulas flagship product TopTextiLookup is the premier personal Internet reference andsimplification tool, empowering millions of Internet users withan easy way to retrieve relevant information and simplifyInternet Navigation."Sounds great, doesnt it? Man, if thats all you read youd runto download this garbage. But wait, read more of the website. Goto the advertisers section and you will read, "eZulas platformleverages the content that the user is viewing in real time andturns key phrases, that best describe the advertiser, into aglobal advertising opportunity that drives qualified traffic tothe advertiser from anywhere on the Web."They further describe, "ContextPro, eZulas Contextual KeywordPlatform, puts you in front of millions of Internet Users,wherever they are on the Web, and enables you to reach them,based on the Context of every Web page that they are viewing inreal time."Heres an analogy. Suppose you were a webmaster and had a productto sell. You spend your good money creating a beautiful brochurewhich you are going to pass out at the local mall. The brochureincludes some helpful content and some advertisements of yourproduct. You are proud of it because youve put your heart andsoul into its creation and you expect to make a few sales aswell.Now as you walk around the mall handing out your brochure, somesleazy guy in a trench coat is following you around. Once in awhile, as you give the brochure to someone, he steps in front ofyou, takes the brochure out of your hands, pulls out a pen andmakes a few changes. He crosses out a few words, writes in somenew advertisements (along with some "content" to make it seemlegitimate), then hands it off to the person you were giving itto. Worse yet, you dont see this happening and as far as youare concerned the end user received your brochure with your ads.Only its been changed without your knowledge or permission.You, the webmaster, have no control over these links. They couldbe competitors. They could be the links of pornographic sites (Icouldnt find anything on the Ezula site which excluded suchsites). They could be links to sites which you disagree with forethical, moral, religious, racial or any number of other reasons.The point is you (the webmaster) have no control over the linksfrom YOUR site. To the user, these appear to be YOUR links.In fact, they will be sites of people and companies who areunethical and scummy enough themselves to sink to this level ofadvertising. They will be the sites of any company which iswilling to shell out the cash.Want more information? Check out the following site for thewhole story. http://scumware.com/If you want to help stop this special brand of evil, then youcan take some steps yourself. First, dont install the producton your computer systems. If youve already installed the thing,then immediately uninstall it.Second, if you do have a problem with this form of scum, then byall means file a report with the better business bureau, write anarticle of your own, send tell your friends and spread the word.You might also send an email to the advertisers who purchase this"service" (if you installed the product you would find out whothey are) and inform them of your distaste. Be sure and point outthat you will not purchase their products as long as theyadvertise in this method. The mighty dollar speaks volumes.Finally, if you are a webmaster, you can add the followinggraphic to your pages, along with a link to http://scumware.com http://scumware.com/images/bugverysmall.gif

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Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secretsat http://www.internet-tips.net - Visit our website any time toread over 1,000 complete FREE articles about how to improve yourinternet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.