You may have heard of Microsoft Smart Tags, but have you seen Ezula and Surf+?

The latest wave of on-line advertising is nothing short of theft, placing advertising on sites without the consent of the sites involved. What's even worse is that it is not clear to the end user that the site itself is not approving of this advertising. Leading the pack in the art of digital theft from webmasters, users, and other companies are Ezula and Intelsoft International. Ezula produces a product called TopText. TopText is pushed to the user as a content enhancing feature that "brings you relevant information, based on the Context of the page you are viewing.". Intelsoft International produces a product called Surf+. Surf+ is pushed to the user as a "Pop-up Manager", promising no more annoying popups, and a privacy guard. But none of this is their true focus, a quick jump to Ezula's home page shows them telling potential advertisers that their product will help them "Own the Net". Intelsoft at least hides this a bit better, not being so blatant, but a quick look at a users experience finds their true focus. In the previous link you'll see screen captures that show Surf+ linking the word Information to an adult sexual enhancement shopping site. In the example this is happening right off AOL's home page, a provider used by most families. Neither of these enhance the user experience at all, instead what they do is effectively steal from content providers and trick end users into clicking links to advertising. Imagine your son or daughter clicking a link called Information on AOL to get redirected to a sex site. Supervising their net use is difficult enough, never mind when you can't even trust the sites you should be able to trust. All because a third party decided they could make a few dollars by taking control away from both the content providers and you. Eye-balls are all they want and they do not care how they get them. These programs get onto users computers a number of ways. The most common method is piggy-backing on popular downloads. The user thinks they are just installing a nice password manager, or a download resume utility, but in effect they also end up installing one of these programs. If you are a user who downloads utilities, take the time and read the fine print! There is a lot hidden there. Often the user will not even know they have installed them. People are used to just clicking yes, especially when they think it is just for one application they downloaded. That means that they will think the webmaster is actually responsible for that link. I wonder how AOL feels about their users thinking that they have linked the word information to that sex shop. As a webmaster myself, I'm livid. I can only imagine they are steaming right about now. Besides scamming users by promising one thing and delivering another, this is outright theft. Cotse, for example, runs no advertising. That is because we are a privacy and security site and advertising on the Net is contrary to both when they seek to track our users. But with these products, it does not matter that we won't allow advertising, they are going to put it there anyway. They are stealing our resources to use for their advertising. That really annoys me, but even worse is the fact that they'll leave our visitors thinking that we have linked off to these other sites. Being a small shop, I can only hope that enough other users and webmasters get upset enough about these products that public outcry will force them out. And when you do get mad, remember that there are two parties at fault, the enablers and the advertisers who are buying these links. I know that I'll go out of my way not to do business with any company using these services and others like them, I hope you will too. /steve Information to counter these services: http://jibbering.com/toptext.html http://www.takebacktheweb.com