eponymousarchon

Ucomics (or mycomics.com, or whatever the hell it is they are calling themselves nowadays) just reached a new high in pop-up advertising for Dilbert.com

Trying to step though their (now grossly truncated) archive always generates pop-up/pop-under advertising. Now - that's not too unreasonable, after all they're not charging me for access to the archives.

Now, I could say that I'm already seeing their in-line advertising on every single page, or add that once I've closed a pop-under window once, that I've seen their advertising already and that I shouldn't have to expect another pop-up when clicking for the next three frames of comic - or even complain that the available archives are really paltry compared to what they used to be - but I'll let that go on the grounds that Ucomics/Mycomics have shareholders and that they, and the artist, have to make money from this somewhere or they wouldn't be providing the service. I accept that - it is, after all, the way the world works.

The problem I have is with the advertising techniques that Ucomics seems to think are acceptable.

I've just been trying to wade through the Dilbert archives, playing a fairly gentle game of 'whack-a-mole' with the pop-ups that each new day's comic produced, when I noticed that the product-of-the-day was an anti-spyware product, due to the faked WIndows XP error dialogues --convincing-looking ones to boot, -- espousing the"Your computer may be running slowly/infected by spyware/taken over by the Illuminati..." line bunkum that you see occasionally, espousing that you click here to install their product.

Now yes, at this point some of the more Internet-savvy of the people reading this would say that , this kind of thing happens regularly and that users should be a ware of it and cynical of that kind of message - but they are the Internet-savvy ones. I know of plenty of users, competent enough at what they do but who aren't that educated in the computer itself and in the deceptive marketing that is being employed here: They are often degree students here - studying Nursing and Physics and Maths, and fairly often English is a second language for them. They're also my parents-in-law, and my uncles, and lots of other people who are just trying to use their computer - and this kind of trickery is bad enough from more dubious sites that might be stumbled onto, but comics.com are a slick commercial entity - they're supposed to be the better example of this kind of thing.

Now if that were where the story ended, I might be simply peeved. But I'm afraid, gentle reader, that it isn't. I *am* IT savvy. I didn't fall for the fakery and clicked 'No'. Twice.

And then it tried a drive-by install.

Really and honestly. I said no and then Comics.com, home of Snoopy and good 'ol Charlie Brown tried to install some crapware anyway. On my system. When permission had been actively refused. And then even tried the whole "You must click 'yes' to continue'" lie, to boot.

Even then, when I'd slapped the website's pop-ups down and denied its attempts to install crudware on my system and dragged the name of the corporate site I was using through the mud and had just about convinced me never to try and read Dilbert on here again, I discovered one final niceness.

Comics.com was the only web page left. The advertising nastiness spewed at me appears to have been merrily re-using my windows and everything else I was doing was gone.

I do appreciate that Comics.com probably sell their advertising space to someone else who is generating this crud without their specific, active knowledge, but this isn't the first time their output has been dubious. Pragmatically? I'll still read Foxtrot on there daily, and wade through the pop-ups to catch-up weekends because that's the only way to get to an excellent strip. But the two or three ones I'd read occasionally and then spend a while catching up on - including Dilbert? Forget it.

And finally remember through all this that this is not a "This should be free" rant . I'm someone who actually accepts the necessity and use of advertising when I'm browsing like this as a way of keeping the service available - But this? This is abusing the relationship.