FC: Gator software reportedly spies on users, company stonewalls

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Previous message:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02446.html

Latest Gator privacy statement:
http://www.gator.com/help/privacy_license-2.6.html

Below message forwarded with Ian's permission. I invite Gator 
representatives (copied above) to reply.

-Declan

********

From: Ian Hiebert <ihiebert () bmcd com>
To: "'sginsburg () iab net'" <sginsburg () iab net>
Cc: "'declan () well com'" <declan () well com>
Subject: RE: Gator Sues Interactive Advertising Bureau -- IAB --
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 11:22:30 -0700

Just in case anyone is interested, we have had serious issues with the 
Gator software on our networks and have banned it's use completely & 
blocked all of Gator's servers & websites! We found that in addition to 
having a vague declaration in the EULA of what the Gator software actually 
does, ( most of our users were quite surprised when they were told ) we 
found when monitoring our network traffic that the gator software 
continually sends data from the users PC to their servers ( and to 3rd 
party servers not owned by Gator.com )even when they weren't browsing the 
web. When we contacted Gator about this we asked to speak to an engineer 
but instead were contacted by someone in their PR dept. who simply quoted 
the information contained in the EULA. Not satisfied with that, we 
continued testing & discovered through packet capture & decoding that the 
software searches & sends not only Gator cookies, but other companies 
cookies to their servers as well. We then contacted about this, and have 
not received a response to date !

We realize there are other companies doing this, but none have been as 
vocal in denying their software's underhanded activity as Gator.com has 
been. We will continue to block Gator.com & its associated servers, and 
their advertisers, and any other web tricks they come up on all our 
corporate networks, & urge others to do the same until Gator.com & others 
like it get the message.

  - "If they want to use our networks for advertising & market research, 
they need to get our permission first & they need to start compensating us 
for it !"


Thank you -

Ian Hiebert
IT Manager

British Motor Car Distributors, LTD.
Qvale Automotive Group




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