Yeah,
supposedly they only get payed for the popups and toolbar clicks. Their business plan morphs every time they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar, so to speak.
Those hidden windows were a early part of their history, they -may- not do that now, but their original intent and their devious behavior is still shining through.
Another partial quote from Ben's page
http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/180-affiliates/
If they were such good honest businessmen, I don't see why they need to do these things.
Quote:
180 practices that hinder detection exclusion from affiliate programs
180 designs its software and systems in multiple ways that make it difficult or impossible to fully study 180's activities, and to track all affiliate accounts used by 180 and its advertiser partners. These practices include the following:
1. Redirecting affiliate commissions without any on-screen display whatsoever. If 180's software showed even a small temporary message on screen (a one-second alert that "commission for your purchase will go to 180solutions"), affiliate merchants and interested users would far more easily be able to identify 180's behavior.
2. Using multiple affiliate accounts under different names, and allowing 180 advertisers to add their own affiliate codes to 180's system. In my examination of 180 configuration files, I can see that 180 currently causes users' computers to invoke at least 13 distinct LinkShare accounts and at least 71 distinct Commission Junction accounts (25 for bfast and 46 for qksrv). I gather that some of these affiliate accounts are held by 180 advertisers, rather than by 180 itself; but in as much as all the codes are served through 180 software, via methods including those described above, they all pose the same problem for merchants: Because 180 software uses so many affiliate codes, not all labeled with 180's corporate name, merchants have no easy way to block all affiliate traffic coming from or through 180. (Complaints about multiple 180 accounts: 1, 2, 3, 4)
3. Redirecting affiliate traffic through multiple domains. The examples shown above include direct bfast and linksynergy links in 180 server instructions to 180 software as installed on users' PCs. But my testing shows that 180 affiliate code traffic often passes through one or more redirect servers. One particularly prevalent such server is shoptoday.us, though I have found traffic passing through dozens of other servers. (Details available on request.) Again, 180 advertisers (rather than 180 itself) may be responsible for some or many of the redirections, but from the perspective of merchants, the problem is identical whether initiated by 180 itself or by 180 advertisers.
4. Using "private registrations" (such as Network Solutions Private Registrations) to shield Whois data, to avoid disclosing the true registrant of the redirect domains described in #3. See screenshot. .......
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