Does Zango hide/spoof user agent?
 

I keep hearing rumors of this especially that the later versions do but haven't seen any links or experienced it myself though a lot of stats programs don't give enough detail on the user agent to show zango without a log analysis.

If so all these various .htaccess etc solutions are not gonna be effective and actual zango penetration numbers will be way off so it would be good to get an answer before more people add these to their sites thinking they are fully covered although of course some detection is better than none.

OzMan, the htaccess method of detecting Zango requires that the toolbar active announces itself through the IE header system. Changing that tag to something else (in more recent installs, likely as a result of discussions here) makes it harder to trace down Zango.

it is a good attempt by them to make the problem look smaller than it is. Looking at their alexa numbers, I have to think that a big percentage of surfers are infected.

(they get 1000 per million, 0.1% daily... they retain average 100 days by their numbers, so 10% install rate would not be out of the question).

I recommend you install zango on your machine and make some tests.

good question... i dont know the answer, but i hope someone does...

.htaccess protection has to be worth installing because it will trap many existing installs. But it would be naive to believe that scumware providers aren't working to stay ahead of the curve.

It would be equally naive to believe that somehow closing down Zango or even all the current flock of scumware providers would make such problems go away. So long as we tolerate unethical people in our business, someone will always be ready to provide them with the tools to help them cheat.

The only way to deal effectively with issues like this is to make it worth more to bigger operators to work honestly. There will always be scammers around, but if they are relegated to the sidelines, then by definition they will have little impact.

If you do the htaccess thing, you might want to include coolwebsearch and a few of the other biggies in there too. I would guess that with less than 5 of the biggest, you would trap out about 10% of your traffic.