• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 5, 2005

As part of an ongoing effort to clean up its image, adware company Direct Revenue last week said it appointed its General Counsel Andrew Reiskind as Chief Privacy Officer. The move reflects a trend by U.S.-based adware companies to arm themselves with legal-compliance officers in advance of anticipated federal anti-spyware legislation.

The decision to appoint Reiskind also comes within three months of the launch of a new Direct Revenue ad-serving product, Aurora, which is generating heated complaints among adware/spyware watchers.

Reiskind, who initially joined the company as general counsel in May, has complete oversight of Direct Revenue's privacy and disclosure policies and practices. He said the company's current business practices are legitimate--and added that Direct Revenue doesn't install its software without first obtaining users' consent. "At this time Direct Revenue is in line with the proposed federal legislation," Reiskind said. "I'm here to police our distribution networks to ensure compliance with our notice and privacy standards and all applicable law, but as things stand we are in line."

In the past, Direct Revenue has been accused of questionable distribution tactics. A December Newsweek article claimed that industry watchers said the company "has stooped as low as any of its rivals in the practices it uses to distribute its software." That article also noted that Direct Revenue recently raised $25 million, with which it purchased online ad agency SoHo Digital.

Recently, Direct Revenue also has launched a live customer support line, and uninstall procedures through its site MyPCTuneUp.com. Also, in some instances, Direct Revenue has openly acted to resolve problematic practices when prompted by critics.

For example, in early June, when security researcher Chris Boyd released several articles on his site VitalSecurity.org charging that Direct Revenue was working with adware marketing firm MarketingMetrixGroup to "seed" adware torrents throughout the peer-to-peer BitTorrent community, Direct Revenue released a statement that read, in part: "We have identified the third-party distribution channel responsible for the download in question, confirmed that the download of our software was occuring in breach of our distribution agreement and without user consent and, as is our policy in such matters, we have shut down the distribution channel responsible for the offense."

Still, a huge divide clearly exists between the company's image aspirations and current popular opinion. "If this new CPO says he's satisfied with his company's current business practices, then he is woefully out of touch with the way Direct Revenue's software is being received by the vast majority of consumers," adware researcher Eric Howes, who runs the site Spyware Warrior, explained.

Much of the recent controversy surrounding Direct Revenue stems from Aurora, a new ad client launched in early April. At the popular online forum BroadbandReports.com, posters complain bitterly about the product.

Howes added that in the six years that he's been covering the adware industry, he's never seen such a heated and consistently negative response. "Aurora's generated unprecedented user complaints to a degree that's really quite unsettling," Howes said.

Direct Revenue and Howes went head-to-head at the end of March after Howes' site, Spyware Warrior, listed MyPCTuneUp.com as a "rogue/suspect" removal tool, based in part on what Spyware Warrior called "dubious corp. CQ associations." Howes later delisted MyPCTuneUp because, he said at the time, that section wasn't intended for vendor-supplied uninstallers.

Company spokesman Jonathan Cohen said that Direct Revenue's business practices are admirable and entirely legitimate. Asked why all of its products aren't tagged with the Direct Revenue name--which some adware observers consider a best practice--Cohen analogized Direct Revenue to a company like Heinz, which sells not only Heinz Ketchup, but also Ore-Ida potatoes.

Some of the Direct Revenue "brands" include: BestOffers, BetterInternet, Ceres, LocalNRD, MSView, MultiMPP, MXTarget, OfferOptimizer, Twaintec, Aurora, BTGrab, DLMax, Pynix, and SolidPeer.