"Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and nobody to be kicked?."
Lord Chancellor Thurlow
Setting out to visit my favorite site, I typed in the address and looked up to find myself on some unknown site I had never been to before. Thinking my fingers moved faster than my brain, I entered the address again. Same results.
Now, since I was trying to get to my own web site, I think I know the correct domain address! And when I checked, it was my address was being displayed on the browser....only it wasn't my web site I was viewing! Something was very wrong!
I spent quite a bit of time trying to troubleshoot the problem and came up empty. Then I turned to the Internet for help. After browsing several sites, I was no closer to finding an answer to my mysterious and persistent misdirection to another web site, but what I did discover deeply disturbed me and left me stunned.
This was when I was introduced to the term scumware, and all the devious and unethical practices that it encompasses. Simply put, scumware is the practice of one business leeching off the promotional efforts of another business and redirecting their customers right off their site. And although I didn't find an answer to my browser problem, I strongly suspect that it is related to the scumware issues.
Like many of you, this is my place of business. I try to earn my living here. I spend hours upon hours writing HTML code and designing a site that I hope you, our visitors, will find both informative and friendly. I do not use "In Your Face" marketing tactics like pop-up windows, persistent banners, frame traps, or redirection like some on-line businesses do.
If you are operating an on-line business, then you know that the job is far from finished once you have your web site the way you want it. There are many more hours spent promoting the site, submitting to search engines, directories, and link exchanges. Not to mention reviewing and updating the original work on your site to keep it fresh and new.
And all of this work is done with one objective. To bring visitors to your site in the hope that they will find value there and become customers.
But now these unscrupulous scumware companies and their customers are feeding off the time and effort and money that we have invested in promoting and advertising our businesses. And the really surprising part about all this (well, maybe not so surprising) is that many of these unethical businesses are large and well-known companies. It isn't enough that they have many times over the operating budgets that we "little guys" do, they have now decided that they must gain another edge over us by literally stealing business right out from under us!
I am alerting you to this problem so that you become aware of it and can protect your web site from it. I have reproduced an excellent article by Kris Driessen, with her permission, on the topic of scumware. She does an excellent job of explaining what scumware is in detail and what you can do to protect your site.
But it is not enough that we be aware of these seedy practices and spend our time scrambling to block their attacks. We must take ACTION! We, as honest business owners both large and small, must stand up to these unethical companies and let it be known that we will not tolerate this theft!
The rallying point for opposition against scumware is Scumware.com. This site is dedicated to exposing these practices and has a lot of in-depth information on the subject, including a database of the companies that are practicing and supporting scumware. I would recommend you go to his site and check it out.
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