Of farts and pop-ups: GlaxoSmithKline is conspiring to infect your PC with noxious adware

[Preliminary note: This is an angry consumer rant. It is based on demonstrable facts, but also contains what I believe to be well-informed and justified opinions. My readers may decide for themselves whether they agree with my opinion, for example, that GlaxoSmithKline is conspiring to infect consumers' PCs with noxious adware. But here's a word to GSK's legal staff: If you want to hash this out in court, my full professional contact information is linked from this website, and I'll be glad to meet you on the steps of either the Harris County Civil Courthouse or the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division. If I can, I'll live-blog the whole deal. And let's also both invite the boys and girls from the mainstream media, shall we?]

After my cardiac adventure in July, I made some big changes in my diet. I was dismayed to learn, though, that a high-fiber diet rich in fruits and vegetables is also a diet likely to produce lots of flatulence. My new, healthy breakfasts of low-processed oatmeal, for example, were leading to bloated and embarrassment-risky mornings. As I looked for ways to manage this problem, my research quickly took me to the website — one I shan't link here, for reasons that will become obvious — of a fairly well-known over-the-counter product manufactured by mega-super international drug conglomerate GlaxoSmithKline. That product, "Beano®," is claimed to contain a "food enzyme from a natural source that works with your body’s digestion to break down the complex sugars in gassy foods[,] making them more digestible."

Well, that sounded promising, and I decided to give Beano a try. Now, ordinarily I'm not much of a coupon-clipper. But I'll bend over to pick up a dime on the ground, and if I'm planning to buy a product anyway, I'll usually clip a coupon for that product if I happen to see one. Thus I clicked the link on the Beano website that promised "$1 Off Coupon and Free Food Pyramid Partner Informational Card."

I'm also a firm believer that TANSTAAFL is one of the natural laws that drives the universe, however, and so I wasn't surprised or particularly dismayed to have to fill out an online survey before I got to the coupon. And yeah, although like everyone I'm up to my neck in email spam, I was willing to fork over an email address en route to the coupon too (although I was a bit miffed that there wasn't an obvious "spam opt-out" box to check). But on my first read-through, I didn't notice the statement reading "You may be prompted to download a small, free software application (called a Coupon Manager) to print," nor click the link to "Learn more about the Coupon Manager and the print process." Instead, I fired up my printer, clicked the "Print My Coupon" button, and expected my browser window to fill with a coupon that I could print out and take to the supermarket.

But no. Instead I found myself at a screen that said: "You need to activate your Coupon Manager. Please make sure your printer is on, and click 'Activate Now’ below. Your coupon will print automatically in about 30 seconds!" And being a typical consumer (which is to say, a vulnerable idiot), I clicked on the "Activate Now" button.

Thankfully, however, in one respect I'm not a typical consumer/vulnerable idiot. A few months ago, I'd finally taken up the suggestions of many friends and had (mostly) quit using Internet Explorer as my default web browser, switching instead to Mozilla Firefox mostly for its better security. And here, Firefox saved me: "To protect your computer, Firefox prevented this site (mn103.coolsavings.com) from installing software on your computer."

Having dodged a bullet, I began looking into who'd shot at me. In fairly short order, I learned that "Cool Savings" is a company that promulgates noxious adware — programs that stealthily infect your PC and that thereafter will pop up windows offering you products you've never expressed any interest whatsoever in buying. They're a zillion times worse than mere email spammers; they're more than simply annoying because they can slow down and eventually paralyze a PC. And they're deliberately designed to be difficult to get rid of.

Just a little bit of Googling took me to this address, where I learned that the specific bit of adware mischief I'd just avoided would have "display[ed] popup/popunder ads when the primary user interface is not visible or which do not appear to be assocaited with the product," and that it "[c]an't be uninstalled by Windows Add/Remove Programs and no uninstaller is provided with the application."

By this point I was more than mildly annoyed, so I began tracing my steps back and looking more closely at the disclosures/warnings — or lack thereof. Checking the "learn more" link I'd skipped earlier, I found this carefully crafted bit of pseudo-disclosure (boldface mine):

The Coupon Manager is a free application powered by CoolSavings, Inc. that securely prints GSK coupons. It helps us bring you high-quality coupons that scan at the register. It is not a trojan, virus, spywear [sic] or virus-delivery software. You will need to install the Coupon Manager to print the coupons. The first time you print a coupon, you will be given instructions on the downloading process....

CoolSavings is #1 coupon delivery Web site on the Internet and trusted partner of GSK.

This is called lying by hiding the important part of the truth. This "disclosure" makes it look like GlaxoSmithKline — a major multinational corporation whom millions of people quite literally trust with their lives when they take GSK medications — is assuring you that you're not screwing up your computer as a cost of printing out this lousy $1 coupon. And technically, the "Coupon Manager" may not be a piece of "trojan, virus, spywear [sic] or virus-delivery software." No, it's just noxious adware that will pester you from now until kingdom-come with pop-up windows containing offers to sell you products you've never expressed any interest in, and that you'll have a devil of a time scrubbing off your computer. To put it mildly, whatever "consent" Cool Savings and GSK obtain in connection with this disclosure is, in my considered opinion, completely invalid because it's not informed consent. To be minimally adequate as a basis for securing informed consent, the disclosures would need to contain the terms "adware," "pop-up windows," "unrelated products," "perpetuity," and "demons from hell." (Well, maybe not that last one, but certainly the first four.)

Now genuinely incensed, I emailed GlaxoSmithKline to complain, and to alert them that they were in bed with a company that promulgates noxious adware. Here's what I got back:

Dear Mr. Dyer,

We have received your e-mail message regarding Beano® Food Enzyme Dietary Supplement.

We're sorry to learn that you have been experiencing difficulty downloading the coupon.  You do not need to agree to future emails in order to receive the $1.00 coupon.

We are not sure why your coupon did not print for you but this is not the reason.

We do manage our coupons through a coupon manger, Cool Savings. It is not secretly installed as you must agree to have the program downloaded. We are sorry to hear that you do not care for our process. We will notify our technical support team of your comments.

We appreciate you as a Beano® customer and again apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced.

We appreciate your taking the time to contact us.

Sincerely,

Sharon
GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare

Now I know that the scammers and the spammers, like the poor, will always be with us. I have no expectations from a company like "Cool Savings," other than a vague hope that some reasonably competent and responsible state attorney-general will put them out of business. But ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, GlaxoSmithKline is "a leader in the worldwide consumer healthcare market" that has "nearly $5 billion in sales, over ten $100 million brands and [is] present in 130 markets." It claims that it "will promote [GSK's] products in line with high ethical, medical and scientific standards and will comply with all applicable laws and regulations." It claims that "[b]usiness ethics is the responsibility of everyone at GSK, not just senior managers," and further claims that "[i]nducements such as gifts or bribes are never acceptable under any circumstances." Yet GlaxoSmithKline knows that the company it's dealing with for these coupons will deliberately and surreptitiously infect your computer with noxious adware, and it falsely pretends that you've knowingly asked for it to do so! Moreover, GSK knows that its "free coupon" absolutely entails nonmonetary costs and inconvenience that its "trusted partner" has carefully failed to disclose.

Indeed — and in this paragraph I'm speculating and making what seem to me to be reasonable inferences, make no mistake — I'd bet dollars to donuts that GSK is getting fees from Cool Savings, quite possibly calculated on the basis of the number of computers thus infected. And I'd bet that Cool Savings, in turn, is buying the presumptive legitimacy of an internationally known company like GlaxoSmithKline precisely because that's the best way to sneak past consumers who'd otherwise never be stupid enough to "consent" to their abuse.

If GSK wanted to offer you a normal $1-off coupon that you could print from its website and take to the supermarket, it could do that with a simple .gif file. Instead, it appears, and it's my considered if subjective opinion, that GlaxoSmithKline has jumped in bed with whored itself out to knowingly become the "trusted partner of" a rip-off artist noxious adware company — not just to try to get you to buy Beano, but to get a cut of the rip-off artist's noxious adware company's sleazy profits. And that's way, way below the standards of professional or corporate ethics that I'd expect of a company in GlaxoSmithKline's position.

I can't speak for anyone else, but as for me: I'd rather fart.

(By the way, I emailed "Sharon" at GSK's Consumer Healthcare division to advise GSK that I intended to blog about this, with an offer to "print any additional comment or reaction or defense that you or anyone else from the company might wish to offer." No answer; but that offer still stands, and my Comments section is open, and I'll email her a link to this post. I'd be delighted to read and reprint here any attempted justification GSK might offer, and more than delighted to correct any factual errors, add any additional contextual facts, or pass along, when and if true, a report that GSK has come to its senses and mended its ways.)

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UPDATE (Sat Sep 17 @ 5:30pm): I'm amused to read of an anti-spyware/adware/malware company that purports to provide "secure content management products and solutions to 50% of the Global 100 corporations, and 40% of the Fortune 500 ... especially those with high volumes of electronic communications, or those for whom content has high value[, such as] GlaxoSmithKline." Whatcha bet that GSK tries very hard to keep Cool Savings' software the heck off its company PCs?