Tuesday, October 23, 2007

How easy it is to destroy the internet experience for everybody else

At some point we have all been exposed to ads when we search the Internet. Some may have installed ad-removal software to get rid of the ads and some haven't. But the fact is that even if you have ad-blocking software installed you cannot completely avoid the ads on the Internet.
Ads serves two purposes for the visitors point of view (laugh now, but at least I tried to come up with an excuse for the existence of ads):

1) Keeps websites running for free or sometimes for a small fee
2) Makes it possible for websites to have better content or bandwidth

So even though we hate ads more than anything else, they do serve some kind of purpose.

Whats worse is ads that tries to trick you into buying crap. Personally I've been seeing an ad for the same company for quite a while now. It tries to trick you into buying the company's anti-virus software and now also their anti-malware software.
The ad is very annoying because it redirects away from the page you were visiting to their fake warning site, where they want you to download their software (I don't even know if it's actually a real piece of software or if it is just another malware).

The first thing you will see is their message box:

you can't do anything else than clicking the OK button and when you do that you will get redirected to their fake warning site:

On this page every link you try to click links to their installer which they want you to download. It doesn't take much of a programmer to see in the binary that the installer will download a load of crap from their site and tweak your Windows settings to make it look like there really is something wrong with you machine (actually when first you have run this installer they are probably right about that you have a problem with you Windows, but they are to blame).

So the lesson here is:

DO NOT ACCEPT OR DOWNLOAD ANYTHING FROM THEM!

By the way, if you know the people behind these ads please do me a favor and tie their shoelaces together at least once a month for wasting my time.

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