Businessweek, of all places, has an excellent expose of spam and spyware king company Direct Revenue, which was one of the pioneering companies to design software that would monitor what you do on your computer and where you go on the internet and call home to report your behavior back to advertisers and other companies, and one of the first companies to start processing and collecting personal data on internet users in order to send them spam and unsolicited email. Direct Revenue claims no wrongdoing in any case, but has suffered significantly in the wake of both complaints from spyware victims and a lawsuit files in April by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
The story goes behind the scenes of Direct Revenue’s plan to hijack and monitor and use the computers of people like you and I, the rise of the company and the clamoring of many companies and clients to obtain and use the kinds of information that Direct Revenue promised them, the successes of the company, and the eventual downfall as the company and its behavior came into public light and the company and its employees were summarily eviscerated verbally and legally by bloggers, pundits, reporters, victims, and anyone else who had something to say about their behavior. From pop-up ads to spam to spyware, the article uncovers the plot to hijack YOUR computer and obtain YOUR personal and nonpersonal information, and summarily sell it for profit.