Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 10/08/2009 4:26:30 PM PDT by brityank
By Susan Bradley
The ads served by Bing and Google along with your search results are linking more and more often to sites trying to infect your machine.
Neither Bing nor Google effectively prescreens these bogus advertisers, so it's up to us to detect and avoid them.
You may recently have used either Google or Microsoft's new Bing search engine to find the popular Malwarebytes Anti-Malware utility. If so, chances are good that the sponsored ads alongside your search results contained links to the very malware that the security tool is designed to remove.
The three largest search sites — Google, Yahoo, and Bing — regularly sell security-related keywords to criminals looking to trick you into downloading and installing fake anti-malware products. The crooks then steal your personal information or hold your system for ransom before letting you remove their malware from your machine.
The search providers have been aware of this for years. To their discredit, they've done little to end the practice, even though it's in their power to do so. The reason? They're making money hand over fist from those sponsored text ads and don't want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Case in point: A Windows Secrets reader searched Bing for Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. He clicked the first link displayed and ended up on a site that installed a rogue antivirus program on his PC. (See Figure 1.)
~ ~ ~
As search terms become popular, scammers jump at the chance to have their bogus ads appear among the results. To get their deceptive ads into these highly visible search results, criminals buy ...
(Excerpt) Read more at windowssecrets.com ...
if these are paid ads then doesn’t that leave these companies open to a big lawsuit?
I fell into that trap and had to format my hard drive to get rid of it.
I have heard of some that even reformatting won’t kill.
I'm sure some lawyer will discuss at length the definition of "open"! ;^)
Ping to one of FR's resident gurus.
Doesn’t Gore own a major part of Google? If so, WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE GOING THERE? Dont...Support...Gore!
A couple of points I learned long ago on Netscape 1.5 - use the Status Bar at the bottom of the window to verify the address the link is pointing to is the place you expect or want to go. That doesn’t work for flash, java, or purposely hidden URL’s. Another is don’t use those idiot home pages from AOhelL, Yahoo, Google, or Micro$oft - they seem to be the biggest providers of all types of mischief.
WS saved my bacon a couple of times - it has a great archive of Windows info, and they will respond pretty quickly to emails.
What is WS?
I have gotten stuff from majorgeeks.com with good results.
Thanks.
I started on Netscape 1.22, I was so far behind my ISP sent it to me along with their installation disc. My computer was ancient even for then (early 90’s).
It was a Tandy 386 SX processor, it had a CD drive, might have been one of the first it was so old. I had to add RAM (it came with 2 or 4 mb, I forget.. I got it to 28 or so. lol), a soundcard, a modem (36.6 The Communicator, that 1.44 wasn’t cutting it) just to make it work properly.
Okay... it had 200MB total HD. I had to delete TANK! if I wanted to play Gunship and vice versa.
F-Prot, Spybot, Ixquick and high Admin rights.
What is WS?
Ever try MajorDomo?
Couldn’t resist the joke. I was in Target today, they had Christmas and Halloween stuff out.
Made me think of the Nutcracker.
I haven’t.
Good morning yesterday....
You wake up and time has slipped away.
Good Gawd. Those were the days when I felt like working on computers.
you would have had one of the first sound cards and video cards.
Just notice your tag. LOL
#9
A smile is just a frown turned uuuupside down,
My friend.
The sound card stank, thats why I changed it. I was years behind everyone else. I learned HTML by watching webpages load oh so slowly. lol.
I paid $100 a year for internet service when I wasn’t trying to use a “free” service.
Well ain’t I stoopid? LOL WS= Windows Secrets.
I am real slooooowww today.
My first PC ran off floppies, and only had 1Meg, but it did have a built in 2400Baud Modem! Except what I needed to do for reports and diagnostics on the mainframe equipment I worked on I stayed out of the PC arena. Never did like the software side, still don't. Thankfully there's lots of help around and folks that live it! :^)
Wordstar? When that was around I loved it. Thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.
Then Win Doze comes along and no more programming language crap.
Still Wordstar was a great program and there was another one around at the time, I forget the name but it really did suck.
DEC? That was a great company. I had a business in excess computer inventory and ran across 8 DEC mini’s. I could not believe the customer just wanted me to haul them off. FREE!
They had moved to some other platform and new vendor didn’t give a trade in.
Those things were completely loaded, every slot. Sold em’ for I don’t remember what but, it was a lot of loot. Some guy in Long Island dealt in those things and took them sight unseen.
To bad they are around anymore.
That is quite a list you have there and I can’t recall which one it was.
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