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Dirty Web Promotion Tricks #1 - Legitimate and Malicious
Javascripts
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By Michael Bloch
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One of the best way to get visitors to further explore yoursite is to convince them to set your home page as their Internetstart page, or for them to add you their "Favorites". In thisarticle, we'll examine some ethical and unethical ways this isdone.
Many sites include legitimate javascripts that allow visitors toeasily add a page to their "Favourites" by clicking on a link. Ascript to achieve this would look like something along the linesof:
======================================================================= SAMPLE Legitimate "BOOKMARKING" SCRIPT:
========================================================================
This script should work well in most 4+ browsers. It is assimple as I could make it, and was put together using a numberof free scripts available as a reference. There are many otherscripts available that allow for the use of images and statusbar text.
In this script:
- When Netscape is detected, it only displays a messagesuggesting that the visitor uses the Ctrl+D command to bookmarkthe page and the scripting will not appear in the source code ofthe page.
- In Internet Explorer, it will add your homepage to thisvisitor's "Favorites" from any page in the site - along with acustom description you specify in the script.
- Other types of javascript enabled browsers will only displaythe suggestion to bookmark (no keyboard commands as this canvary browser to browser), and the script will not be displayedin the source code.
Unfortunately, some companies do not use ethical methods to gaina valued place in a visitors Favorites or bookmarks.
On visiting a web design resource site the other day via asearch engine link, my anti-virus program jumped up and alertedme with the following:
"real-time protection has found that C:WINDOWSTEMPORARY INTERNETFILESCONTENT.IE5S3QFQF0XADVERTS[1].HTM is JS.IEStart trojan."
I hadn't clicked on anything! This script had been activatedsimply through me visiting the page. There were no warnings onthe page that this was going to occur. What the javascript haddone was to reset my "home" page and added entries to "MyFavourites"! I examined the script that had caused it occur andwhile I won't publish it here for obvious reasons, I can assureyou that it would qualify as a "scumvertising" tactic.
When restarting IE I found that via an ezine site and anothermarketing company (from where the script was called), I wasbeing redirected to a very well known software companies' homepage. In total, there were 4 companies involved in thisparticular incident - I look forward to the responses to theemails I will send them.
If you have had this happen to you, I'd like to know aboutit.......
The JS.IEStart trojan is also known as VBS.Passon (CA),VBS.PassOn (NAV) VBS/IEstart.gen.
While it is not destructive, I object strongly to othercompanies adding sites to My Favourites and altering the defaulthome page without my permission or knowledge. If I hadn't had myAV program running in the background, I probably never wouldhave figured out where this script came from. I have since thencopied the scripts, along with appropriate screenshots pendingfurther action.
It is an invasive, disgusting marketing tactic that only servesto irritate visitors; and it helps give the web marketingindustry a bad name. I am sure the company I was redirected towill be interested in knowing that their advertising cash isbeing spent on a marketing firm who uses, in my opinion,illegitimate means to send visitors to them. It is a waste oftheir money as they are recieving traffic that is not targeted -what is known as "garbage traffic".
To the companies that incorporate this type of ploy as part oftheir "bleeding edge" marketing technology - "may you live ininteresting times"! You will be caught out!
It's bad enough that we have to travel the 'net with our AVprograms and firewalls on "paranoid" mode - do we now have tohave "pop up killers" running all the time as well?
Michael Bloch michael@tamingthebeast.nethttp://www.tamingthebeast.net Tutorials, web content and tools,software and community. Web Marketing, eCommerce & Developmentsolutions. _____________________________________________
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