Thoughts of A Genius

(Source: jamestewart)

(Source: kimlennox)

(Source: whatsgoingon12)

thephilter:

“Some of you are quite familiar with AdBlock, a browser plug-in that removes banner ads from websites. Well someone took that idea to the next, incredibly profitable level— a plug-in that replaces ads with ads connected to a single Google AdSense account, so that every ad you see is generating revenue for one guy, regardless of where you surf. And the genius part is that for now, this appears to be totally legal.

The plug-in is called LilyJade, created by Dru Mundorff, and it’s been spreading through Facebook. Just like some services or apps or plug-ins such as Viddy will ask you to install themselves so you can watch a video, so does LilyJade. And when you agree (probably not reading the fine print), LilyJade replaces all of your ads with other ads. To you, it’s harmless and you’d probably never even know. But once it’s installed, every single ad on the internet is straight from Mundorff’s personal AdSense account, generating revenue. For him. It’s evil. It’s genius. It’s legal. I wish I had thought of it first.

While the security world argues over definitions, LilyJade is facing surprisingly little legal blowback. Facebook has already filed a Cease & Desist letter, which Mundorff has promised to fight — but plugins that target ad networks are a new phenomenon, and the legal system hasn’t entirely caught up. Ben Edelman, a Harvard Business School professor who specializes in online fraud, told me Facebook’s case for a lawsuit is strong but, “that said, Facebook has been slow in taking action and hasn’t pursued this as aggressively as I had expected.”

One reason might be Mundorff’s use of the Terms of Service agreement — those blocks of tiny text that pop up with every installation and are almost always ignored. If you’re installing the LilyJade plug-in, it’s likely to say something like, “I allow this program to insert ads into my browser and post on my Facebook wall.” But everyone’s so used to skipping through the Terms of Service that nobody is likely to see that admission, and in court, Mundorff can accurately claim users agreed to everything the plug-in was doing.

Meanwhile, the ad exchanges keep paying out. AdSense, the Google-owned exchange that’s buying all those sketchy impressions, keeps an eye on fradulent activity, but according to Mundorff, “only the [affiliates] that jump up like 3-million-plus in daily ads” get shut down. “As long as someone gradually moves up, they get paid.” And since the ads aren’t straightforwardly fradulent — real people are clicking, after all — they’re unlikely to do much more than that.

Unless the courts get more aggressive, Mundorff’s business is likely to be around for quite a while — and we can expect to see ad-replacing schemes like it for even longer. This isn’t the first ad-inserting software the web’s ever seen — and the largest threat to LilyJade is likely the same anti-virus companies like Symantec and Microsoft that tackle most adware worms. But this is the first social example, gaining traction by exploiting the same tools that were mildly annoying in the hands of startups — little hacks like frictionless sharing and over-reaching app privacy settings. Once they’re turned to more mischevous ends, they start to look an awful lot like fraud.

Via”

(Source: fuckyeahshuthefuckup)