Work to be Done
March 15th, 2007
In an article yesterday on ClickZ, Kate Kaye reports on Ben Edelman’s latest finds in his crusade against spyware and the companies perpetuating it. On his blog, Edelman describes how Cingular and Travelocity ads ended up serving through spyware in mid-February, and he includes data on how the ads passed through the Right Media Exchange. Kaye states: “As presented through packet log data, Edelman implicates Right Media as having distributed spyware-originated traffic to advertisers in four of the six examples provided.”
When we talked about this before, we concentrated on clarifying our role in the market — providing an open environment for buyers and sellers to trade more directly and with greater visibility — and how that will help cut down a lot of the tangle that comes with network inter-trading. That said, we’ve also talked a lot about the systems we’ve put in place, into which we’ve poured a tremendous amount of resources, to proactively combat problems like those Edelman describes. Our Creative Tester system, for example, puts ads in the Right Media Exchange through a multi-step scrutiny to catch any creatives with unsavory characteristics. We described in detail how that system and our auditors’ diligence stopped a new technique that spawns pop-ups out of banners.
We were similarly aggressive in handling the Fullcontext issue. Shortly after being notified of the situation, we determined that the spyware agent was using certain techniques, such as keeping publisher tags in files hidden behind multiple IP addresses on foreign networks, to mask its malicious intent. Within 24 hours of the complaint, we were in direct contact with the foreign hosting firm, and 48 hours after that, the hosting company terminated its contract with the spyware agent. We also severed ties with several publishers deemed associated with the offense described later in Ben’s article.
The systems for catching these kinds of things, however, are far from perfect. Combating the bad guys out there is an ongoing process — clever people are always going to think of new ways to sneak around the security guard. This affects every one of us in this industry — we have to keep learning with every new incident, and work together to make the broad marketplace safer. We at Right Media are spending a lot of time and energy trying to be as proactive and thorough as possible. But there’s more that we can do. Check back in with us on this blog to see how we’re progressing in the fight.
