Claria gets some good press from Wired Magazine: Don’t Call It Spyware
Today Gator, now called Claria, is a rising star. The lawsuits have been settled – with negligible impact on the company’s business – and Claria serves ads for names like JPMorgan Chase, Sony, and Yahoo! The Wall Street Journal praises the company for “making strides in revamping itself.” Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Microsoft came close to acquiring Claria. Google acknowledges Claria’s technology in recent patent applications. Best of all, government agencies and watchdog groups have given their blessing to the company’s latest product: software that watches everything users do online and transmits their surfing histories to Claria, which uses the data to determine which ads to show them.
Spyware researcher Ben Edelman finds that Claria’s latest installers are not particularly user-friendly: What Claria Doesn’t Disclose (Any More): “Claria’s ordinary installations still fail to tell users what users reasonably need to know in order to make an informed choice. In particular, Claria’s current installations omit prominent mention of the word “pop-up” — the key word users need to read in order to understand what Claria is offering, and to decide whether to agree.”
If Claria’s software does not accurately disclose the nature and frequency of pop-ups and denies internet users of the opportunity to accept with informed consent, should it have “the blessing” of “government agencies and watchdog groups”?
