!WARNING!
Parents and Teachers: Please Read and Take Note!
You are being Hijacked!
Your children could be led to a porn site!
This warning is about things over which
NO webmaster has ANY control!
Ezula Yellow Link Virus
Creators of TopText (bundled with a variety of
shareware/freeware programs including KaZaA). Embeds
yellow links (to paid advertisers) into web site without the
permission of the web site owner.
Surf+ Green Link Virus
Embeds green links (to paid advertisers) into web site without
the permission of the web site owner. Numerous reports
that Surf+ includes pornography sites among its advertisers.
Gator Ad Virus
Popular form filler which uses pop-up banner ads to cover
the original web sites ad banners and makes it appear
that the Gator banners are part of the web site.
     We'd like to bring your attention to an issue that has the potential to affect the entire Web community. There's a new form of technology that alters webpages without the knowledge or permission of website owners. The most widespread version of this technology is a program called TopText. TopText comes bundled with the popular file-sharing programs KaZaa & iMesh, as well as several other freeware programs. 
If you've noticed yellow underlines with green edges showing up on a lot of the pages that you visit, you have installed (intentionally or otherwise) the TopText application. These underlines are not the work of the people who created the pages, but are added when TopText alters your browser settings without your knowledge. If you click on one of these links, you'll be taken to the website of an advertiser who paid the makers of TopText (eZula, Inc.) for the underline. 

     This raises a number of concerns. For example, the page that the link leads to may not be appropriate for children. Furthermore, unreviewed links may be introduced into shopping cart links, product recommendations, editorials, online legal documents and posts to online forums, adding confusion and potentially misleading you, the user. It is not just about commercial sites. Such links can even be placed upon web published fiction sites without the permission of the author - right in the
middle of your story. Kind of breaks the mood, huh? You worked hard on your writing and your site why should someone deface it for their own gain and without your consent?

     But perhaps the most frightening concern TopText and similar applications raise is that they may spell an end to the free Web. A huge percentage of the Web's most popular sites owe their very existence to advertising dollars. TopText steals those dollars away from them without any compensation. 

     If this technology is allowed to spread, free sites will be forced to charge fees for their use. And this will dramatically limit the number of people who will be able to afford to use the Internet as a resource. 

     For a primer on TopText and other scumware: 
scumware.com
and
http://www.ipagedir.com/ezula

To remove TopText from your system, go to:
http://www.ipagedir.com/ezula/index.html#uninstall

To get a free code to protect your web pages from TopText:
http://www.searchking.com/ezulakiller/

Also be careful to avoid a similar software to TopText called Surf+, 
which uses green highlighting. If the pages you view are already being altered by Surf+, you can find uninstall information here:

http://www.filemix.net/surfplus/s_faq.htm#13

If you're a website owner or maintainer and would like more information on the fight to stop TopText, see the link below: 

http://gethighforums.com/Forum10/HTML/001386.html

For a directory of anti-scumware sites and resources:
http://www.freegraphics.com/zz-scumware/