Problems For Web Site Owners
The Web sites featuring these bronze colored links (yellow links), green colored links, or popup ads have not given permission to the ThiefWare service to use their Web content in such a way. The ThiefWare services say they are not changing the actual Web page HTML on the server. However, the viewer of the page sees various ad types placed on or around the site when it is within view and this can misrepresent the content.

Many times the ad link or popup ad leads the viewer to a competitor. Imagine the response of a popular store in your area if they found billboards directly out in front of their stores advertising a competitor and the competitor claiming that they are not doing anything wrong. That's what many of these ThiefWare services are claiming. How ludicrous is that statement?

Other sites depend on the ad revenue from sponsors. However ThiefWare services do not pay anything to the site owners when their ads are shown. Whenever the site visitor clicks on those forms of ads instead of the original ads being displayed, the site loses revenue. If this happens enough, you might find your favorite resource site being taken down because of this serious loss of revenue.

Affiliate Site Owners—You Are Victims!
Steps to Fight Back Against ThiefWare
If you are an affiliate Web site owner, you may and probably are losing some of your referral commissions to ThiefWare. You do the work of sending the referrals and the ThiefWare companies step in and take the credit and your commissions.

• Beware of the affiliate merchant who has accepted a ThiefWare company as one of their affiliates. If you do not know whether or not your affiliate merchants are using ThiefWare, ask them if they are utilizing companies like Claria (a.k.a. Gator or GAIN), WhenU, 180solutions and similar companies.
• If you find that the merchant you represent is using ThiefWare, tell them how ThiefWare is hurting all of their affiliates and ask them to drop the ThiefWare company.
• If they do not listen, we strongly recommend that you drop affiliate merchants who use ThiefWare and replace them with merchants who do not use ThiefWare. Send the guilty merchant a message of your disapproval if they refuse to remove the ThiefWare from their affiliate program.
• Where possible, make this your method of dealing with merchants utilizing ThiefWare. Otherwise, you are helping yourself to lost commissions and helping ThiefWare to flourish doing yourself a disservice.

See a real world example of how one such ThiefWare company cheated other affiliates.

Perhaps as a surfer, you are not concerned over this issue. You should be. A good number of these ThiefWare programs track your movement across the Web and gather data on your surfing habits so that they can push ad links or popup ads at you. Do you really want some junk software monitoring your surfing habits just so they can make a quick buck? Do you really want more obnoxious popup ads pushed at you anyway?

Another thing to consider is the drain on your computer's hardware resources. Though not always a problem, ThiefWare can slow down the loading of Web pages and can add instability to your computer. If the offending software is in the process of talking to the ad server while you are downloading pages, you get to have your pages load up slower. Who want's a slower Internet?

Also consider that much of the ThiefWare gets onto your computer using sneaky methods of installation. The ThiefWare companies know that most people would not knowingly install ThiefWare onto their own computers by choice because much of it is just plain junk or there are much better alternatives for the utilities they say they provide. To get around this obstacle they sneak their software onto your system because they do not really want to give you a clear option of not installing it. Do you trust companies who employ sneaky methods like this?

They also prey on teens and kids who want to install file sharing programs for finding music. Several of these file sharing programs are also loaded up with ThiefWare that installs nearly seamlessly. Beware of what your child or teen is installing at all times. They may inadvertently load up some unwanted presents on your computer. It should also be noted that file sharing programs are prime targets for the spread of malicious viruses and zombie programs.

Besides, do you really want to support software that hurts site owners and the sites that you value for helpful information?

Hard to Remove:
Thirdly, it seems to be difficult to completely uninstall some add-on ThiefWare. Reports from various online forum threads suggest that even when you use the default Windows OS application uninstaller, it doesn't remove all the components. Many members of various forums across the net report when they surf the web again, the component that is left behind on the computer connects to the server, downloads the software and reinstalls it on the victim's computer making it ready for reactivation. This inevitably nullifies the attempt at removing ThiefWare.

ThiefWare companies claim that they enhance the user experience. We find it hard to believe that these services actually make our surfing experience better.

• ...And Then There's Porn For Your Kids

  When was the last time your life was made better by more ads? Don't we get enough ads already? Some of these ThiefWare companies claim it as a benefit —a feeble attempt at convincing us we'd be better off with this feature. Remember, these ThiefWare ads get added in addition to the ads that are normally sent with the page to browser. While the sites you view need to present ads to survive, these extra ads add no benefit to the site.
• When was the last time you wanted pages to display a little bit slower? With some ThiefWare running while you surf, the ThiefWare software can make your browser slower when it processes the page for inclusion of the ThiefWare ads. In the case of ThiefWare that overlays links, ThiefWare has to look for select words to highlight and link before the browser is finished rendering — one more step in rendering pages from the net. The links are junk ad links not installed there by the Web site owner.
• When was the last time you wished that your computer was less stable? The browser not only has to retrieving Web pages and render them, the ThiefWare runs an extra layer for ad links or graphic banners too. The extra activity adds to the computer load. If your browser tends to crash your computer without this software, imagine what happens with these unnecessary ThiefWare activities. Then if you have multiple ThiefWare applications running, your computer can get really slow or freeze up.
• When was the last time you wanted the advertising companies to track your movements on the Web so they can push ads into your face? The ads do NOT help the site that you are viewing. Instead they hurt the site owners by diverting traffic and monetary compensation away from your favorite resources.
• When was the last time you wanted the navigation of a site interrupted by a pop-up box (as is the case with TopText)? You want to go to the next page when you click on that text link. The ad company attempts to get you to leave the site you are looking at. You click the ad perhaps losing track of where you were at and what you wanted to find - a bit more aggravation added to slower rendering pages and browser crashes.
• ...And then there's Porn and your kids: When was the last time you wanted your kids to surf the net, perhaps visiting Disney's Web site only to be presented links to PORN? Surf+ was doing just that when it was first released. It seemed that the “plus” in Surf+ meant that you got advertising plus PORN. Reports say they have suspended the porn links but there's no indication they won't continue with them later on.
  UPDATE: Surf+ is no longer in operation. We have no idea if or when they will reactivate their operations.
  Other ThiefWare can also push porn ads in the form of popups. It's a good reason to ensure that ThiefWare does not get put onto your computer.

These are some of the so-called enhancements that come with these software programs. The only real motivation behind these programs is to make money by hijacking Web site content and displaying potentially competitive ads at the time the Web site is within view. What's worse, Web site owners can't even opt-out of such services if you want to call them services.

Visit other sections of this site to get the details on these programs, how to determine what ThiefWare program you might have installed by accident, and what you can do to guard against such ThiefWare.