Hi All:

You might have heard about the recent arrangement between Aluria (makers of Spyware Eliminator, a version of which is bundled with AOL 9.0) and WhenU, one of the more well-known distributors of adware. See here for the press release:

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories....002312862&EDATE

Aluria agreed to de-list WhenU from the defintions it uses for Spyware Eliminator. Suzi at Spyware Warrior has blogged about this:

http://www.netrn.net/spywareblog/

And there's a news story on the same subject here at DSLR/BBR:

http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/56178

But I just discovered that the situation is much worse than I originally thought. What we have here is more than a case of a little mutual back scratching with cross-promotion and links. See:

http://www.whenu.com/whenu_solution.html

From that page:


said by WhenU:
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WhenU is committed to protecting consumers' privacy and consumer PCs against dangerous spyware. This is why WhenU has teamed up with Aluria Software, a leading provider of anti-spyware tools, to provide WhenU consumers with UControl.

UControl is the first product in the online advertising industry that provides a comprehensive scan of your computer and removes unwanted spyware programs, while continuing to provide the deals, offers and value consumers have come to expect from WhenU contextual products.
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See also:

Anti-Spyware Portal » http://www.whenu.com/take_control.html

Free Scan www.whenu.com/take_control.html

In other words, WhenU is now in the anti-spyware business now with Aluria. And a major anti-spyware vendor has now agreed to de-list an adware vendor and start working the same vendor to market its anti-spyware product.

I am stunned and amazed.

Eric L. Howes