jayeff

I wouldn't know you if we bumped into each other on the street. Which means that I start out, the same as I do with anyone else, assuming you are honest, intelligent, etc. Naive, certainly. Gets me into trouble, often. I just prefer to think positively of people until they give me a reason to think differently.

You just gave me such a reason, because there can be no way you sincerely believe that is what scumware means to anyone here.

Those who download scumware have their own issues, such as transparency of disclosure, ease of removal, etc. But they are not what this means to affiliates and other sponsors. We are affected by how that advertising is placed. And the core factor is that its appearance is triggered by someone who has succeeded in getting a visitor to his or her site to click a link through to a sponsor. Generating those clicks is the reason his site exists and getting sales from those clicks is what pays his bills.

Scumware, whether automatically or because some scumware customers choose to use it that way, delivers - as the first page the surfer will see after clicking a link - a page owned by the scumware customer. Even if that page fails to make a sale, given surfers' well-known dislike of consoles (their 2nd most hated feature after spam email), the operator of the traffic generating site has little chance of making a sale.

That isn't competition, to all practical intents and purposes it is theft. In some cases trademarks are being abused and in every case the traffic is being diverted without the permission of nor compensation for the person responsible for its creation.

More than just representing a total lack of business ethics, those who work with or condone scumware also betray a total lack of business sense. If this were a reasonable business model, it would be one capable of being scaled up. But if this one were used by even a majority of sponsors and major affiliates, there wouldn't even be a point in trying to promote anyone in the affected market areas.

Taken to its logical conclusion, affiliates would end up promoting nothing but scumware installs, leaving sponsors to fight over scumware traffic, paying more and more for it until no-one made a cent. Except that of course, if affiliates did promote nothing but scumware installs, there would be no more links to other sponsors on their sites, so the scumware providers would go out of businesses and sponsors would once more need their affiliates.

Scumware providers are middlemen. They do not generate a single extra click, nor a single extra sale for the industry as a whole. All of their estimated $2 billion a year income comes straight off the bottom line of affiliates and sponsors and the only reason they even exist is because of the stupidity and greed of a relatively small number of people and the unwillingness of the majority to act in their own interests.