Well the unethical behavior continues. Unbelievable. Limewire is now using a bundled ad-in called "top moxie" or "limeshop."
This software changes your URL's, so that when you go to amazon.com, for example, it thinks that limewire referred you there, and pays limewire a portion of the money from things you buy.
This seems to be plain illegal to me. If I were amazon.com, I would be very angry that limewire was stealing my money. It's one thing if you click on an ad on the limewire website that brings you to amazon.com. But with topmoxie, limewire has absolutely nothing with my going to amazon, yet amazon pays you anyway.
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"If this brings in enough revenue, we very much prefer it over other bundled software (spyware), and we hope that everyone will agree." -- a fisk, limewire developer.
-- january 16, 2002
http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...5&pagenumber=1
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(at least they're admitting they use spyware now).
The second part of using topmoxie, is that if you click on an amazon.com banner on another site, limewire makes the money, rather than the real referring site:
"I see what you are going through but overwriting and taking a browser's URL functionally destroys our entire companies marketing campaign. I have been a long time fan of lime wire up until yesterday.
When we send out emails and URL's to our customers we use links back to our site. Since I installed lime wire -- no links work because you have overwritten all references and redirected them through linkshare.
All our other affiliates are now getting over written by you as well. You are taking money from other people.
When some one tries to unsubscribe they get redirected instead of landing on our page. Our customer service department will get destroyed. I could go on but you get the picture.
You need to get in contact with us-- I want to work with you on this. I do not want you to be black listed on the affiliates program, being an affiliate is a privilege. Let's get something done about this." -- Michael, ethical web developer Road Runner Sports
-- February 5, 2002
(same post)
LIMEWIRE, YOU SHOULD LOOK UP THE WORD MOXIE.