Spyware being served at MSN?

[mncsc]

In the last couple days, searching on MSN caused my Spybot Search & Destroy's "innoculation" feature to pop up a warning about downloading "Avenue A, Inc.", spyware from a rising internet marketing firm. Pretty low, IMO, to be serving spyware with results?

It seems to happen more often during a new instance of IE at an MSN search, and may be triggered by certain keywords Avenue A, aka AQuantive, Inc., is tracking.

[scottiecl]

Is there more info on the spyware? A quick look at their site didn't refer to any downloads although this blurb from their "About Us" page is pretty telling: Avenue A has been diligently gathering data and tracking online consumer behavior since the early days of the Internet era. Our database now includes over 72 billion discreet consumer interactions on more than 87% of the North American Internet population. Drawing from this extensive collection of information, our research group offers an ongoing series of expert Insights to help improve the success of your online marketing.

[mncsc]

Still looking for a description of the spyware, but found a short article (http://www.town.ituna.sk.ca/Cookiesandspyware.htm) mentioning where to "opt out" of certain spyware programs (http://www.networkadvertising.org/) at the Network Advertising Initiative.

[Dan0]

That's probably a cookie being pushed through when your browser fetches a banner ad. Spyware doesn't necessarily know who you are, and DoubleClick didn't run into trouble until they tried to combine their data with another database to be able ID and target individuals.