Over at the Sunbelt blog Alex Eckelberry is taking on Snopes and there use of malware. Seems that Snopes has decided to make money by using a malware by Zango product which is allegedly infested with adware. In his article Alex states:

Not an urban legend: Snopes pushes Zango

I am a big fan of Snopes, and use the service routinely when getting some typical hysterical email from a friend.

But for a long time now (probably at least a year), I’ve noticed that they are in bed with Fastclick, which in turn constantly serves one annoying ad on Snopes:

That ad, “Do you want to block Junk Emails?” is for a Zango product — adware (VirusTotal report here). And by running this ad, Snopes, which is highly reputable, is providing an implied endorsement of the product.

Well, here is what your screen may look like after you install this pile of crap (incidentally, with miserable notice and disclosure):

He also goes on to say that six months ago he contacted Snopes about the problem and has yet to receive a reply.  To bad. Snopes was always considered a reliable web site, but using junk like this makes this site now one to stay away from.

Comments welcome.

Tags: snopes, zango, malware, adware, junk, crap, product