Adwords for P2P, Advertising Opportunity or Spamming Tool?
Written by Ernesto on November 23, 2008This year, several companies launched advertising programs targeted at the millions of users of Limewire and other Gnutella or eD2k based filesharing applications. The boundary between advertisement and plain old spam is completely disappearing, especially with the recently launched service ‘PeerMatrix’.
Filesharing networks are still gaining popularity, and with millions of active users these networks are interesting venues for spammers and scammers. Recently, Gnutella and eD2k based applications, such as Limewire, Frostwire and eMule have been confronted with a new type of gold diggers – keyword ‘advertisers’.
In the past we’ve reported on the P2P advertising attempts of MediaDefender, but they are not the only company trying to make money from ads on filesharing networks. Last month, P2Pwords launched their adwords service, and more recently, PeerMatrix launched another advertising application targeted at P2P users. Although there is doubt that this type of advertising can be very effective, it’s the ideal cash cow for malware peddlers.
According to a press release from last Friday, PeerMatrix uses a “…revolutionary technology that morphs the name of an ad file to match whatever a P2P user is searching for, thereby dramatically increasing the probability that your ad file will be downloaded and viewed”.
In other words, with this (patented) “revolutionary technology” advertisers will have the possibility to rename their Viagra advert to ‘The Dark Knight Trailer.avi’, if that’s what the user is searching for. Even worse, the advertiser can do this with every file type, including executable malware applications, or trojan horses. The opportunities to use this piece of software to pollute search results are endless.
Angel Leon, lead developer at FrostWire told TorrentFreak that he is not impressed by PeerMatrix’s marketing pitch. Instead, he is worried. “We wouldn’t call this a “revolutionary technology,” he told us. “This is nothing but good old fake search results, otherwise known as spam, and it’s always been in the interest of the community to remove these results.”
PeerMatrix offers their application for free, and it runs on all recent Windows operating systems including Vista and XP. PeerMatrix’s business model is to make money by inserting a small percentage of their own ads along with the files that the ‘advertisers’ choose to spread.
We can’t help but see this application as the ultimate spamming tool. Luckily, most developers of Gnutella based filesharing applications agree with this view. “We’ll try our best to have FrostWire clients recognize these fakes and keep the experience clean, just the way it should be. If a search result doesn’t indicate in some way it’s an advertisement, it’s clearly a deceptive form of spam,” Leon said.
Bernard Trest, President of PeerMatrix disagrees with this description. “YouTube has also been experimenting with overlays and many websites use a similar overlay concept,” he told us. “Essentially the person does not request ads on YouTube however they are forced to view the ad anyhow. If what we are doing is “spam” then Google, Yahoo, and even YouTube are spamming.”
The problem with PeerMatrix, however, is that there is no control over the content that the advertisers put on the P2P networks, even executable files are not a problem. In addition, Trest admitted to us that the ads inserted by their software are not listed as ads in the search results. “The advertising, whether targeted or untargeted, is not designated as advertising,” he said.
If this isn’t the ultimate spamming tool, then what is? We sincerely hope that the developers of filesharing applications will keep a close eye on this new spamming tool, and filter it from the results wherever possible. If that proves to be a problem, many P2P users might have to switch to BitTorrent.
Previously: MPAA ‘Castrates’ World’s Biggest FanEdit Movie Site
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41 Responses
A spamming tool … Yuck!
mislabelling is the enemy of the internet, no brainer
http://www.h33t.com a public site with a community moderated index of correctly labelled torrents
First|
wow…what a piece of junk
When I read the first paragraph, the name “Bernard Trest” jumped immediately to my mind. Read this patent application:
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2006081663
This person is the ultimate parasite and leech of P2P file-sharing. He is trying to take advantage of file-sharers and copyright owners at the same time. This is the guy behind the efreeclub and ifreeclub spam, the fake Bill Clinton MP3 spam.
After reading nonsense like “revolutionary technology that morphs the name” I literally had to puke before I could read on. This is spamming first degree.
Do you have an idea how I got to know his name in the first place? Well, I looked at the spam files and some of the QuickTime MOVs had his name inside as part of a Windows directory path.
No brainer, verdict: SPAM.
I think mostly newbies will be caught by this , and it wont effect torrent users in anyway.
Pity about FW though, thats a good app for songs..
Private trackers will never have this problem and public trackers will probably be able to deal with this spam, they already have to do that today.
That is clearly spam and certainly unwanted.
J.
Yeah, ed2k and those networks have had this problem for many years, bittorrent trackers are harder to spawm. Its nothing unique about it.
I think any kind of advertising thats allowed on PP sites is good, as it provides another means to help pay the server cost involved in running the site.
http://www.aquariumfish.me
If someone doesn’t have the wits to realize that a 10M ad file isn’t the latest Hollywood defecation they were searching for, I have a hard time feeling sorry for them.
Doesn’t make these jerks any less loathsome, but maybe it’ll fool some of the MAFIAA dumbasses into funding them. I always love seeing them blow money on useless schemes to control consumers, just before they bitch about how their profits aren’t as high as they want and it must be the EEVUL PIERATS’ fault.
Expect blocklists (like Bluetack’s Level 1) to be updated with all of PeerMatrix’s IP addresses soon. Ads on sites where torrent trackers are run is one thing, but ads/spam/malware masquerading as real files on p2p networks like Gnutella crosses the line. Already there are a large number of spammers who return PPI (Pay Per Install) results, DRM WMVs, and outright malware on any search on Gnutella. And spamming torrent sites with similar results will get those torrents marked as fakes/spam, and if the site is doing its job, they will be pulled.
Revolutionary technology!?
Hahahah. Sorry, no.
Back when I used to fileshare on Gnutella, you couldn’t run a search for anything without getting fake, autogenerated results back. This isn’t new. This is so old it’s not even funny.
But even putting that aside, what the fuck does this Bernard Trest clown think people are gonna do when they open an mp3/movie only to find an advertisement instead of what they thought they were actually downloading? Run out and buy whatever it’s advertising?
He must be high.
Most(if not all) people fooled by this trick are just going to get pissed off and refuse to buy whatever the ad is selling.
Hmm… So yeah, I second the thought that the MAFIAA should start funding PeerMatrix…
All deception is spam… and even worse, deception. After all, this is… deception. Is deception a good thing or a bad thing? I think that deception is a bad thing.
Roze
http://www.10ch.org/
Goddamn spam, great thats all we need more fakes on BT…
Dont say ham say spam, spam is real sliced ham, you dont say??
Oh god. It isnt bad enough that we’ve got music comapnies coming after us, but now well be flooded with spam. Wonderful.
On the plus side, im really excited to see how many anti-piracy companies use this program lol.
http://bluehumor.co.cc
This company isnt the first. Recently Brand Asset Digital launched the same kind of service but they inject files into the network. I dont think they will get anywhere, but they are welcome to try. People will do anything for a buck.
Visit P2P Tech Time
http://www.p2ptechtime.com
Spam.
Simply skip any search results that EXACTLY match what you entered. Very few files on the P2P will be named EXACTLY the same as whatever you entered.
Another trick is to put the words out of sequence in the search box. Real search results will still match because it doesn’t care what order the words are in, but when the spammer offers you a file with the words you entered, it will be obvious that “trailer knight dark.avi isn’t what you were looking for.
Thats SPAM if i’ve ever seen any…
@ 17
so true, if i do a search in Cabos usually the top results are EXACTLY like my search caps and all so people gotta know what they downloadin’!
im so f*cking tired of ads in my face all the time.
get this through your head, i dont care. i also dont care if thats the only way you make money.
i rather have everything go away then have to deal with ads just to support crap.. i dont care… its anoying and i rather live in a world without ads and no content.
@20 – Go to adblockplus.org and your wish will come true.
The only ads I see anymore are harmless little JPGs on occasion, and never the screaming Flash animations or the multi-exploding popups that would crash me. Sorry if this sounds like spam – which is kinda funny if you think about it.
(It’s free, absolutely no strings attached.)
@20:
If you’re so against ads GTFO because even the current page you just visited has ads bro.
Orly ? i don’t see any. addblock works well
Death to advertising.
No advertising = everything (on and offline) less expensive; think about it
Fuck advertising, it’s mental pollution brainwashing, use firefox and adblocks and say goodbye to fucking useless ads, so fuck off advertisers coke addicts we don’t want you on bittorrent!
No advertising = death to the Internet, mate.
The one difference between YouTube ads and their result, is that YouTube makes sure you know the overlay is an ad, it says right there it’s an ad, and you can close it.
I wonder what did Peermatrix people had for a smoke to even compare their spam results to YouTube’s decent advertisement.
The one good thing about this, is that you won’t ever see a decent big company with the real big bucks to advertise using these type of product for their campaigns, you’ll only see penis enlargers, porn sites and other scams using these services, so they won’t foresee them becoming a major threat.
this is spam and their press release is funny… P2Pwords is the first network for P2P and the ads are not ads, they are real content.
funny
peermatrix is definately spam…
why do spammers try to act like advertisers… what a joke
Hmm, free software with ad’s inserted. Now why wouldn’t I want that on my computer? Erm, maybe because there are better ways to share perhaps?
@25 What we need now is something that blocks those horrid in-video Youtube ads.
@26 – Orly? Then what do you call what we had up until a few years ago?
Advertising is to the Internet what fleas are to a dog. Just because (you think that) you can’t get rid from them doesn’t mean they’re useful.
US gives u the best and worst things.
you watch a movie you get 100 spams.
cool. US is the biggest spammer in the world. Europe has more population but doesn’t spam a quater as much as US.
AdBlock Plus FTW.
Fuck spam and ads.
Peermatrix spamming is only the tip of the iceberg.
They will also make money by charging the owners of the copyrighted files (RIAA, and MPAA) fees for interfering with downloads. Just read their patent.
Check this out from their patent:
“[0044] Network sentry 12 stores a list of protected content in a text file as a set of entries separated by carriage return/line feed combination. Each entry in the list is a , combination, an example of which is shown as follows:
Britney Spears, 0.20
Elton John, 0.20
Electric Light Orchestra, 0.10
Star Wars Sith, 0.85
Wedding Crashers, 0.85
Microsoft Office, 1.50 MS Office, 1.50 Splinter Cell, 1.00″
So that’s a blacklist, look what the number on the right of each keyword phrase means:
“[0046] The role of the portion of the entry is for charging a fee to the content owner upon interference with a transfer of content matching the corresponding .”
So everytime they fuck you over with a fake result, they’ll charge the RIAA with money.
Let’s hope the P2P developers will figure out a way to block these tards.
“No advertising = death to the Internet, mate.”
BAHAHAH
No, mate. I’m old enough to remember that once upon a time even finding an ad on the Internet was a rare occasion.
I’m sure advertisers want you to think the entire Web will implode without them, but please, don’t drink the kool-aid.
http://norgestorrenten.org/signup.php
Nice catch, Jim Guardian… that’s worthy of a story by itself.
@36: Mate, I’m old enough to remember when virtually no companies even had a website. And even those were usually just crappy little index.htmls. ^_~
I take back my earlier metaphor, btw. Advertising is more like… what VDs are to sex.
Bernard is a very common name, isn’t it?
Let’s see if we find it per chance in here:
urn:sha1:B6USLCJJ6K2QU5QHPDV6XYGUOILZMXFG
C:\Documents and Settings\Bernard\Desktop\Files\eFree Club\New iFree Club Ads11-23-07\Video\iFree Club – iPhone MPEG Video.prproj
Oh, what a coincident…
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