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DirectRevenue

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Direct Revenue is a New York City company founded in 2002, known for creating spyware or adware programs.

Direct Revenue includes Soho Digital and Soho Digital International.

Management team

Jean-Philippe Maheu: CEO
Joshua Abram: EVP, Business Development (previously CEO)
Daniel Kaufman: EVP, Corporate Development
Alan Murray: Chief Product Officer
Rodney Hook: CTO (previous CTO was Dan Doman)
Andrew Reiskind: General Council, Chief Privacy Officer
Josh Engroff: VP, US Revenue Operations
Chris Dowhan: VP, Distribution
Mattias Stanghed: VP, Product Development

History

In November 2004, Avenue Media filed a lawsuit against Direct Revenue for deleting Avenue Media's Internet Optimizer program from user's computers. [1]
In January 2005, Direct Revenue was involved in a controversy over installation with Windows Media Player files. [2]
In February 2005, the Avenue Media lawsuit was dropped with a non-public settlement. [3]
In April 2005, a class action lawsuit was filed against Direct Revenue by attorney David J. Fish. [4]
In June 2005, Direct Revenue filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. [5] Direct Revenue was also involved in a controversy over BitTorrent distribution.[6]
In July 2005, Direct Revenue was involved in a controversy over installation with MSN Messenger worms. [7]
In August 2005, judge Robert W. Gettleman allowed the class action lawsuit to proceed. [8] Direct Revenue was also involved in a controversy over installation at a child porn site. [9]
In September 2005, Direct Revenue ended Third-Party Affiliate Distribution of its adware client. [10]
In October 2005 Direct Revenue entered an agreement to distribute its adware client with Kazaa. [11]
On April 4, 2006, New York state Attorney General Elliot Spitzer filed suit against DirectRevenue in New York County Supreme Court, alleging that the company's software violates New York's General Business Law with its "drive-by downloads". [12]

Programs created

Aurora

Released April 2005 [13], Aurora is an adware client most famous for the nail.exe component. [14] The Aurora client has been criticised for several practices: [15]

Filenames with descriptions like "System Startup Service" or svcproc.exe, which could sound like important parts of Windows to some people.
Randomly-generated filenames like qvbdnifharv.exe and dbwqis.exe to make identification difficult.
Putting files in the Windows folder rather than a properly labelled branch of the "Program Files" folder
Not putting full information into the file properties section of its executable.
Multiple processes that restart each other if one is terminated.
Not including an uninstaller, but requiring users to go to MyPCTuneUp.
Starting from the "Shell" location, which is intended for the main interface Windows users interact with.

BestOffers

Released September 2005, [16] BestOffers is an adware client. [17]

BetterInternet

Released mid-2003, [18] BetterInternet is another adware client. [19] It is also used as an umbrella term for several of these other adware clients.

Blackstonedata Transponder
BTGrab
Ceres
DLMax
LocalNRD
MSView
MultiMPP
MXTarget
MyPCTuneUp
MyPCTuneUp is the uninstaller that DirectRevenue provided for their software.
OfferOptimizer
Pynix
SolidPeer
TPS108
Twaintec
VX2 RespondMiter
Zserv

External links