Malware Turns Google AdSense Ads Into Evil
from the only-a-matter-of-time dept
W.B. McNamara writes in to let us know about "a new, deceptive Trojan Horse program has surfaced. The program is engineered to produce fake Google ads that are formatted to look like legitimate ones." I've heard rumors of similar programs in the past, but this is the first time I've seen it documented. It's not that surprising really. The trojan sits on someone's computer and looks for whenever a Google AdSense block is called for, and then replaces the block with its own ads (usually with the type of ads "forbidden" by Google). Of course, there's no contextualization, so it's questionable how effective these fake ads are. Still, with the subject matter so obvious, it's not hard to see how people realized something was wrong. What would be much more nefarious (and much more difficult, of course) would be creating a system that actually does show semi-relevant ads -- swiping all the revenue from both the publisher and Google.
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Malware Turns Google AdSense Ads Into Evil
It will happen - count on it. There will be a running battle between legitimate internet and email users and those who prey on them - as long as there is money in it.
We (collectively) have the power to reduce spam and popups to the level of minor annoyances. They are rampant because they produce lots of revenue. If people stop responding to them, they will dwindle away in about a year. What it takes is widespread and effective education.
I am not optimistic.
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