Contact:
Jeannette Boccini
The
Krantz Group, Inc.
(212) 891-7234
jboccini@krantzgroup.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Chicago, IL -- July 15, 1998 -- Junkbusters Corp. today announced enhancements to its popular Internet Junkbuster Proxy (TM), a free software product that deletes unwanted banner advertisements from web pages and protects Internet users from several threats to their privacy online.
``Internet privacy is fast becoming a contradiction in terms,'' said Junkbusters President Jason Catlett. ``Marketers have openly started selling individual profiles of what people do online, but those parts of the government that ought to be protecting consumers are continuing an ineffectual policy of encouraging `self-regulation,' even when it's clear some companies are going to grab whatever information they can get from people surfing the Web. When you hear the lifeguards saying that even the sharks should be left to self-regulate, you know it's every surfer for himself. This free software should be part of the survival kit of every surfer on the Web.
``Internet marketing companies are busily building huge databases based on the specific sites each surfer visits,'' Catlett continued. ``When someone clicks to go to a page containing ads, the ad company's computers are silently given a "cookie" identifying the person's exact browser and PC. They retrieve an individual profile from their databases and use that information to select an ad, all in the seconds that the person is waiting unaware in front of the screen. These profiles are now being sold without those people's knowledge or consent. The Internet Junkbuster lets people skip over the ads and stay off the marketers' lists.''
In addition to stopping cookies, the Internet Junkbuster Proxy also helps prevent the disclosure of several other kinds of information that most people want kept private, such as their computer's software and hardware configuration, and the queries they type into search engines to find the sites they visit.
When launched in February 1997, Version 1.0 of the product required a UNIX-based system, but Version 2.0 now also runs on Windows 95, 98 and NT, and OS/2. Many new features have been added, including the ability to route Web page requests via an anonymizing proxy on a different computer, new blocking mechanisms to help protect children, and several features to help the many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who run it as a service for their customers.
The free software has proved enormously popular. Each week thousands of people download the product from Junkbusters.com in under a minute, and many more get copies from their friends and colleagues, from mirror sites around the world or through other distribution channels. It has been recommended in dozens of publications and included on CD-ROMs in computer magazines. Many companies, schools and ISPs have installed the software on centrally located computers, which save the institutions money on bandwidth and lets their users start enjoying a more private, faster, and less cluttered Web.
Mr. Catlett will discuss the many threats to online privacy and the countermeasures consumers are using to protect themselves in a presentation titled ``The Privacy Arms Race'' at Summer Internet World 98 in Chicago at 10am on Thursday, July 16.
Junkbusters's web site (http://www.junkbusters.com) is a leading consumer resource on the control of telemarketing calls, unwanted mail, email (spam), and commercial invasions of privacy. The company's flagship service, Junkbusters Declare (SM), gives consumers a fast and easy way to say what they want and don't want from direct marketers. Its other free, web-based service, Junkbusters Spamoff (SM), has become one of the Internet's most popular ways to deter junk emailers. Based in Green Brook, NJ, Junkbusters is a ``virtual corporation'' whose mission is to free the people of the world from junk communications.
UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Limited.
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