Virus Characteristics
This description is posted due to inquiry about the fact or fiction regarding a recent discussion about software produced by a company named Aureate Media, and accusations of installing software that illicitly tracks end-users browsing habits in efforts to provide this data to Internet sources.
According to the author of the original email source of this investigation, the initial analysis of code by Aureate was "taken out of context" and should not have been publicized as the initial study was not complete. There is no basis to substantiate the claim or accusation and is therefore false.
Details provided by Aureate on the topic include the following:
"What Aureate Media does do is deliver advertisements that are displayed in the software applications that are part of our network. In addition, our users are presented with a voluntary user survey which includes questions such as user hobbies and interests. All questions in this survey are optional and users are told that their responses to this survey will help us to deliver advertising messages related to their interests."