WTO Parody Site Accused of
Harvesting E-Mails
Clever site mimics actual site so
well it's fooling search engines.
Peter Sayer, IDG News Service
Wednesday, October 31, 2001
Search engines are directing visitors to
a subtle
parody of the Web site of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) instead of the real thing--and the WTO is powerless to stop
it, the Geneva-based body warned Wednesday in an e-mail to
members of its mailing list.
The parody site, which has been around
since late 1999, has in the last week copied the WTO's own
site design and begun harvesting the e-mail addresses of
visitors without their permission, WTO spokesman Jean-Guy
Carrier says. This could enable the hoaxers to send visitors
information purporting to be from the WTO, he says.
However, the "harvesting" of e-mails
seems hardly discreet. The e-mail collection function seems to
be tied to the parody site's search feature. An attempt on
Wednesday to use the search feature led the fake site to
attempt to launch the user's e-mail client using a simple
"mailto:" link to send a message to the site's creators, but
the link appeared to be broken.
Another attempt on Wednesday triggered a
pop-up message warning the user: "This form is being submitted
using e-mail. Submitting this form will reveal your e-mail
address to the recipient, and will send the form data without
encrypting it for privacy." The user then was given the option
to either cancel or continue with the search request.
Parody Goes Deep
The parody (it's www.gatt.org address is
a reference to the WTO's predecessor, the General Agreement on
Trade and Tariffs) mimics almost every detail of the WTO's own
site--right down to the front-page warning about a fake site
masquerading as the real thing. The hoaxers have subverted
this to warn visitors of the imagined dangers of a third
site, set up by the WTO to promote an upcoming conference.
The parody site contains so many
references to the WTO that search engines are directing people
to it instead of the real thing. A search of Altavista using
the keyword "WTO" returns the parody site in fifth place.
The hoaxers have made small alterations
to the text on their copy of the site. "Secretary General Mike
Moore" in the original text of a press release becomes "Chief
Executive Officer Mike Moore" on the fake site, and "a draft
Ministerial Declaration on intellectual property and access to
medicines/public health" is transformed into "a draft
Ministerial Declaration on Intello-Corporate Ownership and
access to medicines/consumer work-fitness."
While the WTO encourages criticism of its
role, there are limits to the forms this should take, Carrier
says.
"It's a serious argument to make for or
against the WTO, and we encourage that," he says, but "not
masquerading as the WTO. It's very deceptive, it literally
steals the look of the WTO," he says.
Powerless to Prevent
The WTO is powerless to put an end to the
masquerade until a new procedure for domain name arbitration
is introduced by the World Intellectual Property Organization
allowing it to take control of the domain www.gatt.org,
Carrier says.
Meanwhile it would be possible to sue the
creators of the parody site for theft of the WTO's graphical
identity, but "We are not in the business of suing people," he
says. "First of all its very expensive, it takes a lot of
time, and we are not that kind of organization. It's not a
course that interests the WTO at all."
The domain name www.gatt.org is
registered to Jonathan Prince of Washington, D.C., operator of
the Web site killyourtv.com, but another group calling
themselves The Yes Men claim responsibility for the WTO
parody.
A request for comment made via e-mail by
the IDG News Service to a The Yes Men e-mail address found on
the group's site yielded an e-mail response from someone
claiming to be a group representative.
"We are not harvesting e-mail
addresses--it's just not so easy, if you're dumb like us, to
write a search script, see? We don't know how they do it, so
we can't rip that off. It's easier to just put a mailto: in
there."
The representative, signing himself
Andrew Bichlbaum, wrote that e-mail messages sent to
searchdesire@gatt.org by the search form would receive an
automated reply.
On their Web site, The Yes Men claim that
the parody has even resulted in them being invited to speak at
a conference on the WTO's behalf. They say they sent a speaker
named Andreas Bichlbauer to a conference in Salzburg in
October 2000.
Martyn Williams in Tokyo contributed
to this report.
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