Radiates Advertising Software

For the period of 04/04/2000 through 04/07/2000, 20/20 contained advertising software from Radiate (formerly known as Aureate Media). All current versions of our applications now use our own proprietary ad software.  We no longer use Radiates ad software. However, I am going to leave this page up for people have questions regarding Radiates ad software and how it works.  

1. Radiates technology requires the ad be visible at all times. 
   
   
2. Radiates technology rotates ads automatically when you are connected to the Internet.   Because of this, their ad software runs in the background whenever you start your browser.
   
   
3. Radiates technology contains a facility for communicating through a proxy which addresses the firewall problem.  If an application is running on a machine that does not have Internet access, the application will still run.   However, only the default ad will be displayed.
   
   
4. Radiates ad software will present you with a demographic screen that can optionally be filled in.
   
   
5. Radiates ad software contains off-line caching logic (relates to point 1).  In other words, it is capable of detecting if you are connected to the Internet and if so, it will pull new ads and place them into their cache.

The 5th point may initially bother you, as it well should.  It bothered me when I first began researching alternative advertising methods. Because Radiates ad software does connect to the Internet while you are browsing, this caused a multitude of rumors to surface regarding the information Radiates ad software exchanged with its ad server (see the Radiate/Aureate Privacy hoax).  The Internet is obviously a great tool for disseminating information, both good and bad.  From my own research and testing,  I have come to the conclusion that the rumors questioning Radiates intentions, are just that, rumors.  The following links contain information regarding the privacy controversy:

Gibson Research Company
http://grc.com/optout.htm

McAffee
http://vil.mcafee.com/dispHoax.asp?virus_k=98516

Ziff Davis
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/columns/0,4351,2478459,00.html

Computer Virus Myths
http://kumite.com/myths/ following the link under "The newest hysteria".

As always, if you have any question, let me know.

© 2000, byLight Technologies, Inc. (all rights reserved)
last modified: Wednesday, January 02, 2002