Benjamin Edelman - Publications

Benjamin Edelman - Selected Publications

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Academic publications - see separate listing

Spyware

Spyware: Research, Testing, Legislation, and Suits (spyware index site). (June 2002 - present)

Installation Methods

Google Toolbar Tracks Browsing Even After Users Choose "Disable", Google's Privacy Breach: Lessons for Companies, and Protecting Privacy by Design (Japanese translation). (January-February 2010).
The Sears "Community" Installation of ComScore. (January 2008)
Zango Practices Violating Zango's Recent Settlement with the FTC. (July 2007)
ComScore Doesn't Always Get Consent. (June 2007)
Why I Can Never Agree with Adware and Spyware. The Guardian. (January 2007)
Bad Practices Continue at Zango, Notwithstanding Proposed FTC Settlement and Zango's Claims. (November 2006)
Intermix Revisited. (November 2006)
Current Practices of IAC/Ask Toolbars. (October 2006)
Certifications and Site Trustworthiness and Adverse Selection in Online "Trust" Authorities. (September 2006)
The Safety of Internet Search Engines & Search Engine Safety, Revisited (May 2006), The Safety of Internet Search Engines - Revisited (December 2006)
Nonconsensual 180 Installations Continue, Despite 180's "S3" Screen. (February 2006)
Pushing Spyware through Search. (January 2006)
180solutions's Misleading Installation Methods - Dollidol.com. (January 2006)
Scanning for Solutions. (December 2005)
What Claria Doesn't Disclose (Any More). (November 2005)
Video: New.net Installed through Security Holes. (October 2005)
What Passes for "Consent" at 180solutions. (June 2005)
Ask Jeeves Toolbar Installs via Banner Ads at Kids Sites. (May 2005)
Hotbar Installs via Banner Ads at Kids Sites. (May 2005)
The 180 Turnaround That Wasn't. (May 2005)
The PacerD Installation Bundle. (April 2005)
Claria's Misleading Installation Methods - Dope Wars. (April 2005)
Claria's Misleading Installation Methods - Ezone.com. (April 2005)
180solutions's Misleading Installation Methods - Ezone.com. (April 2005)
3D Desktop's Misleading Installation Methods. (April 2005)
Comparison of Unwanted Software Installed by P2P Programs. (March 2005)
How Google's BlogSpot Helps Spread Unwanted Software. (February 2005)
How VeriSign Could Stop Drive-By Downloads. (February 2005)
Claria's Practices Don't Meet Its Lawyers' Claims. (January 2005)
Media Files that Spread Spyware. (January 2005)
Video: Ebates Installed through Security Holes. (December 2004)
Direct Revenue Deletes Competitors from Users' Disks. (December 2004)
Who Profits from Security Holes? (November 2004)
Gator's EULA Gone Bad. (November 2004)
Grokster and Claria Take Licenses to New Lows, and Congress Lets Them Do It. (October 2004)

Revenue Sources & Funding

Google Click Fraud Inflates Conversion Rates and Tricks Advertisers into Overpaying. (January 2010)
Google Still Charging Advertisers for Conversion-Inflation Traffic from WhenU Spyware. (January 2010)
How to Combat Online Ad Fraud. Harvard Business Review 87, no. 11 (November 2009): 24-25.
The Dark Underbelly of Online Advertising. HBR Voices / HBR Now. (November 2009.)
How Google and Its Partners Inflate Measured Conversion Rates and Increase Advertisers' Costs. (May 2009)
Hydra Media's Pop-Up Problem -- Ten Examples. (October 2008)
Auditing Spyware Advertising Fraud: Wasted Spending at VistaPrint. (September 2008)
Deterring Online Advertising Fraud Through Optimal Payment in Arrears and Delaying Payment to Deter Online Advertising Fraud. (February - March 2008)
Spyware Still Cheating Merchants and Legitimate Affiliates. (May 2007)
How Spyware-Driven Forced Visits Inflate Web Site Traffic Counts. (May 2007)
Advertising Through Spyware -- After Promising To Stop. (March 2007)
How Vonage Funds Spyware. (July 2006)
Spyware Showing Unrequested Sexually-Explicit Images. (June 2006)
Banner Farms in the Crosshairs. (June 2006)
The Spyware - Click-Fraud Connection -- and Yahoo's Role Revisited. (April 2006)
Critiquing ITSA's Pro-Adware Policy. (March 2006)
Advertisers Funding Direct Revenue. (March 2006)
Advertisers Funding 180solutions. (March 2006)
Affiliate Hall of Shame. (January 2006)
Claria Shows Ads Through Exploit-Delivered Popups. (October 2005)
How Affiliate Programs Fund Spyware. (September 2005)
How Expedia Funds Spyware. (September 2005)
How Yahoo Funds Spyware. (August 2005)
More on Google's Role: Syndicated Ads Shown Through Ill-Gotten Third-Party Toolbars. (June 2005)
Intermediaries' Role in the Spyware Mess. (May 2005)
Advertisers Supporting eXact Advertising. (March 2005)
Investors Supporting Spyware. (January 2005)
The Effect of 180solutions on Affiliate Commissions and Merchants. (July 2004)
Advertisers Using WhenU. (June 2004)
Dell's Spyware Puzzle. (June 2004)
Documentation of Gator Advertisements and Targeting. (May 2003)

Miscellaneous - Consumer Education, Legislation, Litigation, Privacy, Mixed Topics, etc.

Facebook Leaks Usernames, User IDs, and Personal Details to Advertisers (May 2010)
Upromise Savings -- At What Cost? (January 2010)
Securing Online Advertising: Rustlers and Sheriffs in the New Wild West. (In Beautiful Security, edited by John Viega.) (September 2008)
Spyware and Adware. Written testimony submitted to the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Hearing on Impact and Policy Implications of Spyware on Consumers and Businesses. (June 2008.)
Debunking Zango's "Content Economy." (May 2008)
Critiquing C-NetMedia's Anti-Spyware Offerings and Advertising Practices. (February 2008)
A Closer Look at Coupons.com (August 2007) and Coupons.com and TRUSTe: Lots of Talk, Too Little Action (March 2008).
Cookies Detected by Anti-Spyware Programs: The Current Status. (September 2006)
People of the State of New York v. Direct Revenue, LLC. (April 2006)
Deciding Who To Trust. (December 2005)
Cleaning Up Sony's Rootkit Mess. (November 2005)
Why Should Small and Medium-Sized Businesses Be Concerned about Spyware? (September 2005)
Debunking ShopAtHomeSelect. (August 2005)
Netscape 8's "Trust Rating" System. (May 2005)
Threats Against Spyware Detectors, Removers, and Critics. (March 2005)
What Hope for Federal Anti-Spyware Legislation? (January 2005)
180 Talks a Big Talk, but Doesn't Deliver. (January 2005)
California's Toothless Spyware Law. (September 2004)
WhenU Copies 26+ Articles from 20+ News Sites. (May 2004)
WhenU Security Hole Allows Execution of Arbitrary Software. (June 2004)
WhenU Spams Google, Breaks Google "No Cloaking" Rules. (May 2004)
WhenU Violates Own Privacy Policy. (May 2004)
Expert Declaration in WhenU v. Utah. (May 2004)
Methods and Effects of Spyware - FTC Comments. (March 2004)
A Close Reading of Utah's Spyware Control Act. (February 2004)
Expert Declarations in Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC, et al. v. the Gator Corporation. (June 2002)

Domain Names, ICANN, and Internet Infrastructure

Measuring the Perpetrators and Funders of Typosquatting, introduction, and web appendix. Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security. Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Forthcoming.
Priced and Unpriced Online Markets. Journal of Economic Perspectives 23, no. 3 (summer 2009): 21-36.
Running Out of Numbers: Scarcity of IP Addresses and What to Do About It. Proceedings of the First Conference on Auctions, Market Mechanisms and Their Applications. Springer-Verlag's Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering. (2009.)
Running Out of Numbers? The Impending Scarcity of IP Addresses and What To Do About It. (June 2008.)
Unintended Adventures in Browsing. McAfee Security Journal. (Fall 2008.)
Opening Dot EU (A) and (B). Harvard Business School Cases N9-908-052 and N9-908-053. (2008.)
Domains Reregistered for Distribution of Unrelated Content: A Case Study of "Tina's Free Live Webcam". (March - April 2002.)
Large-Scale Intentional Invalid WHOIS Data: A Case Study of "NicGod Productions"/"Domains For Sale". (April - May 2002.)
Alternative Perspectives on Registrar Market Share: The Fortune 1000, the Forbes International 500, and the Yahoo Directory - Revisited (2003 Update). (November 2003)
Alternative Perspectives on Registrar Market Share: The Fortune 1000, the Forbes International 500, and the Yahoo Directory. (May 2002)
Technical Responses to Unilateral Internet Authority: The Deployment of VeriSign "Site Finder" and ISP Response. (October 2003) With Jonathan Zittrain.
Survey of Usage of the .BIZ TLD. (June 2002) With Jonathan Zittrain.
.NAME Registrations Not Conforming to .NAME Registration Restrictions. (May 2002)
Large-Scale Registration of Domains with Typographical Errors. (January 2003)
Compliance with UDRP Decisions: A Case Study of Joker.com. (June 2003)
Survey of Usage of the .US TLD. (August - September 2002)
Registrations in Open ccTLDs. (June - July 2002)
DNS as a Search Engine: A Quantitative Evaluation. (June - July 2002)
Survey of Domain Registration Services. (August - November 2003)
Intentionally Invalid Whois Data. Written testimony submitted to the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property Oversight Hearing on Internet Domain Fraud & US Government's Role in Ensuring Public Access to Accurate Whois Data. (September 2003)
A Case Study of Disputed Registrations in .BIZ. (May 2002)
Analysis of Registrations in the ARNI .BIZ Top-Level Domain and Analysis of Registrations in the IOD .WEB Top-Level Domain. (June 2001)
ICANN Substantive Analysis and Conference Briefing Books: IFWP Consensus Summary and Working Drafts Comparison (July - November 1998), Executive Summaries of Formative Documents (July 1999), ICANN and the Public Interest: Pressing Issues (November 1999), Pressing Issues II: Understanding and Critiquing ICANN's Policy Agenda (November 2000) (co-author and co-editor).
TLD Registration Enforcement: A Call for Automation - Part I and Part II. CircleID. (September - October 2002)
Invalid WHOIS Data: Who Is Responsible? CircleID. (November 2002)
Domain Name Typosquatter Still Generating Millions. CircleID. (February 2003)
Jurisdiction over Domain Names: Too Much Law Or Too Little? CircleID. (March 2003)
Quantifying Traffic to VeriSign SiteFinder. CircleID. (September 2003)
Alternative Perspective on Registrar Market Share: Measuring Market Share of Corporate Registrars. Verisign Digital Brand Management Services - Digital Branding Bulletin. (December 2003)
Defensive Registrations: Why They're Still Needed, and How to Make Them Earn Their Keep. Verisign Digital Brand Management Services - Digital Branding Bulletin. (December 2002)
Experimental Cross-Registrar WHOIS Client. (July 1999, obsolete)

Filtering the Internet

Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China and Real-Time Testing of Internet Filtering in China. (March - November 2002) With Jonathan Zittrain.
Internet Filtering in China. IEEE Internet Computing. (March - April 2003) With Jonathan Zittrain.
Documentation of Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia. (May - July 2002) With Jonathan Zittrain.
Expert Report and Appendices for Multnomah County Public Library et al., vs. United States of America, et al. (challenge to the Children's Internet Protection Act). (October 2001 - April 2002)
Localized Google Search Result Exclusions. (October 2002) With Jonathan Zittrain.
Empirical Analysis of Google SafeSearch. (April 2003)
Edelman v. N2H2, Inc. (July 2002)
Web Sites Sharing IP Addresses: Prevalence and Significance. (February 2003)
Replacement of Google with Alternative Search Systems in China: Documentation and Screen Shots. (September 2002) With Jonathan Zittrain.
When the Net Goes Dark and Silent. The South China Morning Post. (October 2002)
Blocked Sites Will Return, but with Limited Access. The South China Morning Post. (January 2003)
On a Filtered Internet, Things Are Not As They Seem. Reporters Without Borders Annual Report 2004 - Internet Under Surveillance. (June 2004)
Documentation of Internet Filtering Worldwide. Spreading the Word on the Internet: 16 Answers to 4 Questions. OSCE Representative of Freedom of the Media Conference Reflections. (November 2003)

Electronic Commerce

Sony's Crackle: Invisible Traffic Galore. (April 2010)
How to Combat Online Ad Fraud. Harvard Business Review 87, no. 11 (November 2009): 24-25.
Payment Card Network Rules Prohibit Aggressive Post-Transaction Tactics. (December 2009)
Deception in Post-Transaction Marketing Offers. Statement for the Record submitted to the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. (November 2009) See also Deception in Post-Transaction Marketing (document index).
Towards a Bill of Rights for Online Advertisers. (September 2009) (Reprinted with revision as "Who Owns Metrics?: Building a Bill of Rights for Online Advertisers." Journal of Advertising Research (forthcoming). Excerpted in Advertising Week Welcome Guide. Excerpted on Huffington Post.)
Priced and Unpriced Online Markets. Journal of Economic Perspectives 23, no. 3 (summer 2009): 21-36.
How Google and Its Partners Inflate Measured Conversion Rates and Increase Advertisers' Costs. (May 2009)
Fraud in Online Advertising. The Business Standard (India). (April 2009)
In Support of Utah's HB450. (March 2009)
False and Deceptive Display Ads at Yahoo's Right Media. (January 2009)
CPC/CPA Hybrid Bidding in a Second Price Auction. (December 2008)
Privacy Lapse at Google JotSpot. (October 2008)
CPA Advertising Fraud: Forced Clicks and Invisible Windows. (October 2008)
Competition among Sponsored Search Services. Written testimony submitted to the United States House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Task Force on Competition Policy and Antitrust Laws. (June 2008) (hearing cancelled) (reprinted in HBS Working Knowledge)
PPC Platform Competition and Google's "May Not Copy" Restriction. (June 2008)
Optimal Deterrence when Judgment-Proof Agents Are Paid In Arrears - With an Application to Online Advertising Fraud and Delaying Payment to Deter Online Advertising Fraud. (February-March 2008)
Microsoft adCenter. Harvard Business School Case 908-049. With Peter Coles.
Sears Exposes Customer Purchase History in Violation of Its Privacy Policy. (January 2008.)
Assessing and Improving the Safety of Internet Search Engines. Published in The Rising Power of Search Engines on the Internet. (2007)
On Best-Response Bidding in GSP Auctions. With Matthew Cary, Aparna Das, Ioannis Giotis, Kurtis Heimerl, Anna Karlin, Claire Mathieu, and Michael Schwarz. HBS Working Paper No. 08-056. 2008.
Optimal Auction Design in a Multi-unit Environment: The Case of Sponsored Search Auctions. With Michael Schwarz. (December 2006)
False and Deceptive Pay-Per-Click Ads. (October 2006)
Adverse Selection in Online "Trust" Authorities (2006-2009) and Certifications and Site Trustworthiness (September 2006).
Cookies Detected by Anti-Spyware Programs: The Current Status. (September 2006)
Strategic Bidder Behavior in Sponsored Search Auctions. With Michael Ostrovsky. Decision Support Systems, v.43(1), February 2007, pp.192-198.
Internet Advertising and the Generalized Second Price Auction: Selling Billions of Dollars Worth of Keywords. With Michael Ostrovsky and Michael Schwarz. American Economic Review, v. 97(1), March 2007, pp.242-259.
Greedy Bidding Strategies for Keyword Auctions. December 2006, Revised April 2007. With Matthew Cary, Aparna Das, Ioannis Giotis, Kurtis Heimerl, Anna Karlin, Claire Mathieu, and Michael Schwarz.
Cookie Stuffing Targeting Major Affiliate Merchants. November 2004.
The Effect of Editorial Discretion Book Promotion on Sales at Amazon.com - Introduction & Table of Contents; body available upon request. (September 2001 - March 2002) (summa cum laude)
Earnings and Ratings at Google Answers - working draft. (October 2003 - January 2004)
The Effect of Geographic Location on Economics Journal Citations - available upon request. (December 2001 - January 2002)
Documentation of Buy.com Security Breach. (October 2000)
Using Trumpet Winsock on Netcom Netcruiser Accounts (June 1995, obsolete)

Retransmission and Geographic Restrictions

Expert Memorandum attached to National Association of Broadcasters submission to Industry Canada (re retransmission of commercial television content over the Internet). (September 2001)
Initial and Supplemental Expert Declarations in National Football League, et al., v. TVRADIONOW Corporation (iCraveTV). (January - February 2000)
iCravetv.biz/Entervision Retransmits CNN, Cartoon Network, PAX TV, California NBC Affiliate. (June - July 2002)

Testimony transcripts and additional publications are available upon request. A symbol marks academic publications. marks documents written for or about, or used in, litigation.