Add emoticons to your emails!

I was looking for some information on the intertubes and google dropped me onto a website that it thought would help. I found a large block of ad content on the site that said "Add emoticons to your emails!" with a collection of the ever-stupid animated gif images that wink, grin, clap, and do all the other idiotic things that invariably attract the clueless. I started wondering what sort of business model would these folks - the ones who put these ad out - have. So, I clicked on the ad (I am on a Mac using Safari, which is important to note). And, no surprises here, it downloaded a windows executable file. I am and my Mac declined to entertain it. A bit more digging revealed who were the malware makers and how they work. (Learn more about malware here) But, here's their business model (understood after reading the EULA. The EULA can be paraphrased as: I'll do your machine in. You indemnify us against it. Have a nice day.):
The malware presents ads based on your browsing habits: websites you visit, keywords you search with, etc. That in itself is standard operating procedure among such software. What's sinister about this innocuous looking "emoticon-in-your-email" ad is this: malware ads can (and I am sure do) target ads for adult sites. As you may know, on the internets, porn is big money. That's how these emoticons makers make their fucking money.

All this is not really hard or anything to figure out. But, then, I didn't know these details before. Now I know what those stupid online emoticon ads are and I hate them more. Use Firefox for safe browsing and clue yourself in. It's a bad world out there.

More like this

Photographer Scott Rowed has penned an excellent essay on his experience making the switch to Linux, and he's agreed to place it here as a guest post. Please read it and pass it on to people, school districts, small island nations, and others who may benefit. This is a repost from about two years…
Facetime Communications has href="http://www.facetime.com/pr/pr060918.aspx">announced that they have seen evidence of a new Internet worm that spreads via AOL Instant Messenger.  It comes in the guise of a picture, that is astually an executable file.   The user first sees an ordinarily link…
Yesterday, Greg Laden posted a short response to my post about the recently discovered Apple patent application for an ad-supported operating system. Some of the comments that people left on Greg's post raise issues that I want to respond to. Since I'm lazy, and writing something up in the…
The other day, Julia and I decided to install SimCity 4 Deluxe for Windows on one of our Linux boxes. Using Wine, the install went fine, but the program would not run. It would kind of start up but then die with no obvious explanation. With a bit of work I can probably find the reason and fix it…