" A ship in a harbor is safe; but ships are meant to sail. "
John Shedd
In the never ending battle to optimize advertising dollars, both Microsoft, Ezula and Gator have come up with plans to highjack your visitors. They have created a way to hyperlink certain keywords and phrases on your website to their advertisers.
Microsoft underlines their link with a purple "squiggle" to show that they are "smart tags"; TOPText uses a yellow highlighter; and Gator pops their own ad over your advertisers banners. Anyone viewing the page could then click on the tag and be transported to the website which has paid MS, Ezula or Gator to advertise their product to your customers.
Microsoft's SmartTags are downloaded as part of the XP technology. After public pressure, they agreed to make SmartTags opt-in - this time. They have not agreed to keep them opt-in and a petition is now circulating asking MS to continue their opt-in policy. Webmasters can keep MS smart tags from working on their site by including a special "opt-out" metatag in the header of each and every page. Here it is:
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
eZula's TOPText, which is downloaded automatically with many programs such as KaZaa, allows them to display keyword targeted links on your site, without your permission and without compensation of any kind. Not only is TOPText not an opt-in program, it's not even opt-out. You could try writing to: support@ezula.com and ask them to block your web sites from displaying their links but according to a letter Ezula sent to a GeekTalk forum member, they will not exempt your site from their links.
SearchKing has created a way to prevent their links from showing up on your site. Copy this code into your pages and the links will not display. Place it either just after the BODY tag, or just before the /BODY tag (after body will prevent the reload from being noticeable, before /body protects you in case their server becomes slow and unresponsive so your page will still load). This code needs to be on every page you want to protect. An added bonus - it even works with Surf+
<SCRIPT language="JavaScript" src="http://www.searchking.com/servlet/ezulafix"></SCRIPT>
SgtSearch believes Ezula uses CSS/VB/DHTML, and their ability to utilize the SPAN feature, which is an HTML tag used to indicate a portion of the text within another tag for special processing. They suggest adding this code to each page between your head tags:
<!–– StopText code courtesy SgtSearch.com and Thiefware.com ––> <style type="text/css"><!–– span {font-size:1px} ––></style> <!–– Stop here and insert into your site head tags –>
If you were going to add it to your external style sheet, it would look like this:
span {font-size:1px}
Thiefware also offers a JavaScript TopText disabler. This one is placed in the root of your web. Developer Dispatch offers a JavaScript which creates a pop-up window explaining the problems caused by TopText and how to get rid of it. TakeBackTheWeb has a similar JavaScript that redirects your visitors to Lavasoft's Ad-Aware program.
Gator, a highly useful program which remembers passwords, also collects user information. In a new twist to steal advertising, however, Gator has created an advertising program in which their ads are cleverly configured to overlay existing ads. This has landed them in trouble with the courts.
Ezula and Gator's refusal to consider the impact on the webmasters of the sites they infringe upon has spawned a new term - Scum
ware - and a number of websites dedicated to putting them out of business. Although there is hope a copyright or trademark infringement lawsuit will put a stop to these tactics, perhaps the best way to put them out of business would be to make it unprofitable . Ezula has indicated it has over 30 advertisers, such as BMG, McAfee.com, WellsFargo Bank, and HomeGain. A letter or E-mail to each of these advertisers protesting their tactics and refusing to buy their products might influence them to give up their association with unethical advertisers.
Related Issues
The image toolbar feature in Internet Explorer 6 makes snagging images easier for users. When the user moves the mouse pointer over an image, a toolbar is displayed that enables the user to easily save the image to their hard drive. According to the MSDN website, in order to disable the Image Toolbar on your site use this META tag:
<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no">
Permission is hereby granted to freely copy and distribute this article provided credit is given to the author, Kris Driessen, and the website PhoebeMoon.com
We would like to thank Kris Driessen for allowing us to post her informative article.
Feeling a little overwhelmed by all the additional codes?
Here is an example of what it looks like in your html code. 
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