BestOffersNetwork.com Makes Its Last Offer

MediaPost's Wendy Davis reports that "infamous adware purveyer" Direct Revenue, which ran the site BestOffersNetwork.com, is now out of business. As Davis notes, Direct Revenue would never have made millions by infiltrating its ad-serving/user tracking software onto hundreds of thousands of clients without the willingness of big clients to underwrite its nefarious business model. These clients included Cingular Wireless, Travelocity and Priceline (it is not clear from the article whether they were unwilling participants or knew in advance about what Direct Revenue actually did).

Only the active intervention of the Federal Trade Commission was able to stop Direct Revenue, but as Davis correctly observes, the people behind it are still at large and more than likely to pop up again soon on a computer near you.

Wikipedia has a good page on Direct Revenue with a timeline of legal actions against the company, plus a list of programs created to exploit computer users for profit.