Advertisers funding Spyware

The Center for Democracy and Technology has released a new report called Following the Money: How Advertising Dollars Encourage Nuisance and Harmful Adware and What can be Done to Reverse the Trend. Many of the other Blogs I’ve read today(listed on the left) have already reported this news and have been exposing the names of companies mentioned in the report like NetZero, eHarmony, NetFlix and Club Med.

This report is a follow up to an earlier FTC complaint filed by the CDT against 180solutions Inc. The report presents a good model on how legitimate companies can easily end up advertising with illegitimate adware vendors.  I was a little disappointed that the report did not include the full company list. Even though they were negligent, some companies brave enough to response weren’t exposed.

One of the consultants on this report was spyware crusader, Ben Edelman .  If you’d like even more information on how the report was created and see some screen shots, Click here.