Stop Zango FUCKING DEAD! Here's How...
 

I was reading the new batch of posts this morning about Zango and getting more and more pissed off. I went and put a warning on some of my sites, and then started thinking...Fuck this, I don't want to warn people, I want to stop any Zango infected browser from even touching my site. I don't want to just hope the surfer reads and does something, I want to throw it in his face and MAKE him read.

So here it is. 2 (or 3) simple lines in your .htaccess and you're done. Zango infected browsers can't hit your site, and surfers get a page telling them what zango does, a link to the FTC page explaining who the scumbag company behind Zango is, and a link to remove the crap from their computer.

Put these lines in your .htaccess file, preferably in the root web directory of your domain or domains:
That's it. If you already have rewrite rules in your htaccess file, simply omit the "ReWrite Engine On " and add the following 2 lines to the rest of your rewrite rules.

Any browser with the zango toolbar installed will be redirected to http://www.thefilthyfew.com/zango.html

I will leave that page there until the end of time. Make your own page and redirect them to it instead, or send them to mine, I don't care, just fucking do it.

This code should work on any apache server, but if you have trouble, let me know and I'll try to help you get it working, although I promise nothing.

If you want to verify that it works, I have it set up on http://www.myfuckinwife.com I can view the page fine in firefox and a clean IE, but with Zango installed I get bounced to the warning page.

Hey, great to see someone doing something vs. just bitching. Don't know if I'll use it but great job!

excellent. Zango must be stopped :)

I don´t like being robbed...die Zango, dieeeeeeeeeeee :thumbsup

It's so simple, and it takes less than 10 seconds to do it. A surfer might see this once and ignore it, but if he starts to see it over and over again on his favorite sites, he WILL stop and see what he needs to do to get back to his favorite porn.

If just a few of the high traffic sites implement something like this, it could take a huge chunk of advertising revenue out of both Zango, and the companies that are supporting them. An ad that doesn't get seen, is worthless.

I keep seeing someone posting zangoblacklist.com it looks like a good place to start.

http://www.411-spyware-remove.com/remove-zango/

They should set up an affiliate program or something. I think that would accelerate things :)

:thumbsup :thumbsup

Great post Bill. I am putting this in effect on a few of my pages today.

Excellent.

Done, works great:thumbsup

I think redirecting them to a direct download would just look like another spyware install. If I tried to hit a page and suddenly got a download prompt, I'd just close it. I think there needs to be a page in the middle explaining what's going on.

the only problem with that i could see is that people will think they're downloading a dialer or something.

bump for all the hard working webmasters! Do not let Zango rob you!

if a user visits your site using firefox and they got the zango installed will the user agent not show as firefox not zango as the zango user agent only gets used for their popups I might be wrong

I installed Zango on my PC and it didn't touch firefox. It looks like it only installs itself into IE by default. But anyway, what the rewrite does is check the user-agent that gets reported and if zango is found anywhere in that line, they get redirected.

Here's an example of one of my log lines with Zango installed on IE:
You can see that the toolbar comes up as one of the options after the browser type. If it can be installed into firefox, it should come up the same way. The redirect only cares if "zango" is there or not, it doesn't care what browser is being used at all.

Here's a bump and a little more info. If you think Zango doesn't effect you or your site, try this little experiment.

If you're on a linux based server, log into your shell, go into whatever directory stores your logs and type this:

grep -i zango access_log

Replace access_log with whatever your log is called, although 95% should be access_log.

Every single line that comes up on your screen there is a hit from a browser with Zango installed. I guarantee that anyone who does this will find thousands.

yeah woo hoo the anti-zango revolution in full efect wahaaaa

Thanks for the tip.

I've been sending Zango users to a warning page for awhile

I'd still like to know how to implement across all the domains on a server more easily.

I don't really have the time to sit down now and find the exact how-to type stuff, but basically anything you put into an .htaccess file can also be applied to the global apache httpd.conf file. Htaccess really is just a per-instance extension of the conf file.

You should be able to set up the exact same redirect code somewhere in the virtualhosts configuration section of your main config file. Then it would be effective on every single domain on the server.

Of course, doing it that way, you'd have to redirect them somewhere off that server, or you'd get an infinite loop.

I'll see if I can find the exact stuff sometime tonight or tomorrow.

thanks now i can log into guba without getting annoying popups :thumbsup

And ya know Topbucks offers Adware Remover Gold as a product you can sell and make money on, I send my Zango infected surfers to them.

Very handy. I hope they dont decide to change their useragent to something unique now.

hey bitching serves a purpose too. Like he said he was reading all of the zango posts this morning and what he was reading made him pissed so he did something.

Not everyone can do something, if it wasn't for the people bitching then people like Fuckin Bill might not have ever found out about this. Hell even the sig whore bumping these threads and keeping them on top help.

Anything to stop zango and make the business model fail.

I might add that if you want to test your .htaccess without installing that crap on your machine, you change your user agent string with firefox with the instructions here:

http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2004/04/2...useragent.html

or you can get this plugin for firefox that will do it also. If you are web developers, you should have this knowledge handy anyway.

If they do, I will personally write something in PHP to put at the top of all our pages that will find it and redirect. The right regular expressions will be able to sort out anything they come up with.

thanks for link to plug in

bump for the night crew

Thanks I just updating some of my sites. Anything to stop all the zango fucking thieves.

I keep a eye on my logs so if they change it I will spot it pretty quick.

nice can i use the text here? http://www.thefilthyfew.com/zango.html

anyway, want to put those htaccess in my sites but i find it quite confusing with the htaccess that i have right now.

ie:
is this right? hehe i don't want to fuck up my htaccess lol

ohh and thank you!

:thumbsup :thumbsup

Point taken.

My perspective was more from a "finally! a post that doesn't just say 'fuck zango'...woohoo!" which, I agree, do serve a purpose but over time offer no new insight and gets very repetitive for anyone here longer than a day as it seems as if every 1 out of 5 new posts are the 'combatants' trying to publicly one-up one another (which explains the new threads).

It's not going away. It won't. I'm not telling anyone what to do, but I believe it is in the best interest of GFY to post a single sticky at the top labeled Adware/Spyware/whatever or a new main folder on the topic and put it all there so it doesn't become like most other boards...don't watch for a couple days and come back to virtually the same topic.

What do I know though...I can't even PM. :1orglaugh

What you have there should work. Of course, test it and double check everything to make sure it works as normal in a regular browser.

Bump for a good thread, let us all remove sponsors that steal our traffic, do not support this robbery!!!!!!!!!!!
I found this useful link with a list of sponsors using Zango Steals Cash
http://www.zangobacklist.com
nik

thanks for the link !

Hey? the link doesn?t work! Really! I tried over and over again. :mad:

who is zango?