WhenU Partnered with Aluria:
Are You Tired of Seeing the Ads Yet?

by Larry Stevenson, aka Prince_Serendip, CastleCops Staff Writer
November 7, 2004

Are You Tired of Seeing the Ads Yet?

Let's face it, in the views of big business, most of the computer users and companies on this planet are willing and ignorant sheep ready to be fleeced by anyone with the knowledge and means to do so. A tiny, though vociferous minority of security people are actually protecting themselves, their families, friends and others who come to them, from these "sheep shearers." As long as the majority of computer users and companies refuse to learn nor care how to protect their equipment and information, they will be big money business for both legitimate and criminal interests.

Are You Tired of Seeing the Ads Yet?



Please understand that online advertising is a multi-billion dollar business. Legitimate means to provide it do exist but some companies will "pull out all the stops" to make more money. The big players do not care about you except for the opportunity to get and hold your attention long enough to program your buying habits. They care most for profits and power, of increasing their influence and market shares. Do not believe anything they say. They will tell you whatever you want to hear, but they will go right on doing business "as usual." Win or lose, they continue doing the business which brings them so much profit.

Are You Tired of Seeing the Ads Yet?

The Players here are AOL (America OnLine), Aluria and WhenU all partnered together.

WhenU is an aggressive online advertising service. It gets SaveNow, its star-program (amongst others such as WhenU Shop, Weathercast, ClocSync etc.) downloaded and installed on any computer it can find. It could be bundled with P2P file shares or with another product such as Aluria's Spyware Eliminator? SaveNow is spyware which logs where the user goes with Internet Explorer and what they are interested in. It then provides advertisements on the webpages viewed by the user based on its findings. The ads are not actually on the websites the user visits, but on the pages generated by Internet Explorer in their computers. Users URLs can also be shanghaied to sites specifically linked by WhenU.

WhenU has been kicked off of both Google and Yahoo in the past for artificially raising its ranking by using a prohibited measure known as "cloaking."

87% of users do not know that they have WhenU softwares on their computers.

WhenU software is shown to transmit URLs that users visit, precisely contrary to the WhenU Privacy Policy and their other statements.

Are You Tired of Seeing the Ads Yet?

Aluria provides an ostensible anti-spyware application called, "Spyware Eliminator." Aluria Software has partnered with the WhenU company and given WhenU a "spyware free" certification. Yet, WhenU softwares are proven spywares.

Aluria does not verify spyware threats. By independent testing, it has been shown that Aluria does not verify if threats are real or hoaxes. They do not check the facts nor do any form of manual verification of possible threats. It suggests that Spyware Eliminator largely does not eliminate spyware.

Aluria has made it quite clear in their EULA and Privacy Statement they plan to share your information with marketing partners via co-registration services, by direct marketing and telemarketing. If you enjoy getting annoying telemarketing phonecalls during dinner, email boxes brimming with Spam, and salespeople arriving at your door, then ignore our warnings. It is up to you to decide if this is the kind of privacy guarantee you want from a company who is supposedly protecting your privacy.

Are You Tired of Seeing the Ads Yet?

AOL is providing their new spyware stopper in AOL 9.0-Optimized from Aluria. Aluria is in alliance with WhenU. If you use AOL, get rid of the Aluria based software and get something that really does the job of eliminating spywares and adwares. Many reputable applications are available here at CastleCops. You may need the help and assistance of our security people to clean WhenU's softwares as well.

CastleCops Downloads Section



Best regards and always take care of your security!
Larry Stevenson