Popups.
I love these popup makers. They're getting dumber and dumber. Or they think the average computer user is getting dumber and dumber. Either way, they're a lot of fun.
I got a forced-redirect from a website today that sent me to "onlinevirus-scanner.com" and "initiated" a scan of my "C:" drive (which is impossible, since Macs don't use drive letters like Windows). Then a popup window appears, in the Windows XP default "Luna" style (seriously? Does anyone leave Windows XP in the default style anymore?) telling me that I have dangerous spyware on my system:
I personally love the names--"Trojan.InfoStealer.Banker.s" is my favorite name for a trojan horse ever. How thoughtful of the virus writer to give it such a colorful and informative name.
I also love that the trojan horse that is stealing my banking information is only "medium" risk, while the porn advertiser is "high" risk. Hmmm. Which is worse? My identity being stolen, or tits? I guess onlinevirus-scanner.com thinks tits.
Finally, the coup-de-grace. When you click on the big red "close" X on the dialog box, you get the second, real dialog box that is called by the actual operating system. Notice that it's in Mac OS X style, since...you know, I'm on a Mac. I love the text. Read it to yourself a few times and see if you can spot all the grammatical errors. Anyway, clicking either OK or Cancel forces a download of an executable named "InstallAVg_7758212.exe"--obviously they're so worried about my online safety that they're offering me AVG Antivirus without even asking me first. It tried to execute and failed, of course, because it's a Windows executable. I think I'll load up a fresh install of Windows XP in Parallels and see what it actually is.
Here's the thing that gets me, though. The website has the ability to read the metadata being sent by my browser. So, therefore, it knows that I'm running Mac OS X version 10.5.6, using Safari 3.2.1. They could have easily tailored the website to look a little more Mac-like after it read the metadata. It still wouldn't have fooled me, but it would have been that much more convincing.
I got a forced-redirect from a website today that sent me to "onlinevirus-scanner.com" and "initiated" a scan of my "C:" drive (which is impossible, since Macs don't use drive letters like Windows). Then a popup window appears, in the Windows XP default "Luna" style (seriously? Does anyone leave Windows XP in the default style anymore?) telling me that I have dangerous spyware on my system:
I personally love the names--"Trojan.InfoStealer.Banker.s" is my favorite name for a trojan horse ever. How thoughtful of the virus writer to give it such a colorful and informative name.
I also love that the trojan horse that is stealing my banking information is only "medium" risk, while the porn advertiser is "high" risk. Hmmm. Which is worse? My identity being stolen, or tits? I guess onlinevirus-scanner.com thinks tits.
Finally, the coup-de-grace. When you click on the big red "close" X on the dialog box, you get the second, real dialog box that is called by the actual operating system. Notice that it's in Mac OS X style, since...you know, I'm on a Mac. I love the text. Read it to yourself a few times and see if you can spot all the grammatical errors. Anyway, clicking either OK or Cancel forces a download of an executable named "InstallAVg_7758212.exe"--obviously they're so worried about my online safety that they're offering me AVG Antivirus without even asking me first. It tried to execute and failed, of course, because it's a Windows executable. I think I'll load up a fresh install of Windows XP in Parallels and see what it actually is.
Here's the thing that gets me, though. The website has the ability to read the metadata being sent by my browser. So, therefore, it knows that I'm running Mac OS X version 10.5.6, using Safari 3.2.1. They could have easily tailored the website to look a little more Mac-like after it read the metadata. It still wouldn't have fooled me, but it would have been that much more convincing.