Zango just can't seem to leave it criminal days behind. Spyware researcher Ben Edelman today published evidence that shows that the company is still engaging in deceptive installations of its adware application.

Users who are lured in by Zango's promise of "free" games, videos and other premium content still don't get proper disclosures about the pop up advertisements that they will have to put up with.

31 Jul 2007

Zango claims that Edelman is "dead wrong", stating that he used outdated copies of the Zango software that will no longer function. The company also accuses the researcher of manipulating his research by running his tests on an "archaic computer with low or outdated screen resolution".

The discussion all goes back to a legal settlement last October, when Zango agreed with the FTC to stop questionable installations of its adware application.

The adware maker at the time sent out a boastful press release in which it claimed that it was already in compliance with the new rules. It took spyware researcher Ben Edelman only a few weeks to collect evidence that nothing was further from the truth, and today he claims that is still the case.

Edelman (pictured right) and Zango may have a history together, but you have to at least assume that the researcher has a point. If anything, Zango is the convicted party here, and the company has a track record of bad boy behavior that goes well beyond the FTC settlement.

Zango furthermore keeps playing the "customer choice" card, mentioning the millions of users of its software.

But if its software is so intensely popular, the firm would have no problem giving up its affiliate programmes that caused all its problems. For Zango always has argued that it were unscrupulous distributors who caused illegal installations of its software. It has cut of dozens of these botnet herders and greedy website operators, but you can't weed out crime altogether.

If drug addicts cause trouble, you ban drug. If distributors cause trouble, you stop providing your products to distributors. According to Zango, users are finding its software insanely useful. Then why rely on a network of malware traffickers and underground types to distribute the software?

• A video demonstration of botnet instaling multiple adware applications is available on the Security Watchdog blog.