From the eZula Web site
For example, an advertiser targets the Home Audio category. Every Web page across the entire Internet, that includes the word DVD, DVD Player or other selected keywords within this category, will be underlined and upon hovering, highlighted, with a short text message beneath the marked keyword that describes the advertiser. Clicking on the marked keyword, wherever it is on the Web, will take the user immediately and directly to the relevant URL on the advertiser's Website.
Impact on WebMasters/Site owners
Any TOPtext infectee visiting your Web site may see yellow links--to possibly seedy merchants--that you didn't put there. To a novice user they may look like part of your site.
The bad news is, it appears this sort of thing is entirely legal--the ad-inserting software is no more than a specialized Transform Engine, much like many Web page translation tools. This fools the viewer into thinking that it is a valid link you put on the website they are viewing. For the web site owner, this means that traffic is directed away from your site to a competitors website or perhaps a porn site. They are, in effect, stealing your customers with no reimbursement to you.
The good news is, you can send an email message to support@ezula.com requesting that your site be excluded from this yellow-link graffiti fest. Additionally, I have seen mention that adding the following meta-tag will help block TOPtext as well:<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
This may or may not work but it won't hurt to put it in your code.
Users
If you see new sleazy links yellow highlights on your favourite web pages that weren't there before, check for a program called Ezulamain.exe running in the background. If you don't want this beastie on your system (and I don't see why you would), it can be removed by going to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs, selecting TOPtext (or whatever it's called this week) from the list, and pressing Remove.
NOTE: Another piece of software that is very similar to Ezula's TopText is called Surf+. It does basically the same thing.
Solution:
- Avoid programs like Kazaa or any program that tries to load extra software.
- Read the fine print in the User Agreement.
- I hightly recommend that you download and use a free program called Ad-Aware by Lavasoft