Webmasters: you can DETECT when surfers have Zango installed
 

I saw it posted on another board that Zango shows up in the user-agent line that browsers send to the web server when they fetch an object. Did a test and sure enough it is there. Some examples:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; ZangoToolbar 4.8.2)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; ZangoToolbar 4.8.2)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; ZangoToolbar 4.8.2)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; YPC 3.2.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; ZangoToolbar 4.8.2)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; ZangoToolbar 4.8.2)

This means you can check if "ZangoToolbar" is present in the Apache HTTP_USER_AGENT field and redirect to a page explaining why, and how to uninstall Zango.

So far 0.4% of my uniques are showing as having Zango installed.

So how many sponsors are going to step up and say that they will deny affiliate traffic that has "ZangoToolbar" in the user-agent field? Hmmm?

Welcome to last week.

Yeah, I saw Smokey posted it. In this case, duplication isn't a bad thing. The more eyes we get onto this issue the better.

BoyAlley: if a sponsor is aware that affiliates are buying pops from Zango for their site(s) then there's a good chance that people with Zango installed are arriving from those popovers.

Of course then you have companies like AFF which are actively buying the Zango traffic themselves...

As an affiliate I'd readily take a -0.4% hit in clicks/$ just to know that something is being done about it.