The Company You Keep

A recent crop of news stories about accusations that voice over IP phone provider Vonage is funding spyware point out a potential pitfall of online advertising that smaller advertisers might not be aware of.

Anti-spyware researcher Ben Edelman says that Vonage ads are being delivered by a whole range of types of spyware. Because of Edelman's stature, a number of news outlets have picked up the story:

• Vonage Has Run Out of Feet to Shoot (Network World)
• Vonage Ads Delivered Via A Dozen Spyware Makers: Report (Information Week)
• Vonage and spyware (ZDNet)
• Spyware expert: Vonage injects ads into others' sites
• Spyware Watchdog Singles out Vonage Ads

It's important to note that nobody is accusing Vonage of intentionally choosing to use spyware to deliver their ads. Edelman's contention is that third parties that work with Vonage are doing this, and that Vonage isn't doing enough to control them:

Vonage isn't the only advertiser with widespread spyware ad-buys. Other buyers of untargeted or semi-targeted ads get plenty of spyware-delivered advertising too. For example, I see Verizon ads in spyware pop-ups with remarkable frequency. In a future article, I'll present screenshots of some other big spyware advertisers.

As best I can tell, Vonage does not specifically intend to have its ads shown in spyware. Instead, the advertising chains shown above reveal that these are generally indirect relationships, not direct spyware ad buys. (In comparison, see my September 2005 report of Expedia directly and intentionally buying spyware-delivered advertising from numerous notorious spyware vendors -- a practice that, to its credit, Expedia subsequently stopped.) Yet by failing to take appropriate precautions and failing to diligently supervising its ads, Vonage makes payments to spyware vendors -- funding spyware that is known to harm users' PCs.

Does this really help Vonage? I doubt it. That last thing that they need, in their quest to sign up new customers, is word that they are doing something - even indirectly - that harms consumers' PCs.

The lesson: be very wary about who you work with to deliver ads online, and make sure that you are keeping track of what they are doing, and ending relationships with those who aren't adhering to the right standards. Otherwise, it's your reputation that is on the line.