Virus marketing reaches new lows

[david petley]

What do you guys think if this sad little situation...



ratbags

for those too lazy to click...

Anti-virus company Sophos has warned that its Australian technical support have been receiving reports from people who receive an e-mail inviting them to visit a Web site -- run by Avenue Media NV, based on Curacao in the Caribbean -- containing free comic video clips, including on of Bill Gates copping a pie in the face.

Users who visit the site and view a video clip begin sending the e-mail invitation to their friends. The site achieves this because the video clip is not downloaded directly, but instead an ActiveX control is launched which not only displays the video, but also downloads and additional software component named "Internet Optimizer" onto the computer, which sends the e-mails.

david p.

[jamble]

I'm sick as **** of all this crap that comes flying into my inbox these days, the best ever golf wedge emails, the bigger pecker and balls, dirty teen ho's, and the best one, spam about spam stopping software.

Email is becoming an unreliable means of communication for me these days, I'm starting to lose legitimate messages because I am not seeing them through all the junk I get and sometimes my filters pick them up and delete them.

It's a real shame and I'm praying (well, not praying but you know what I mean) that stronger anti-spamming/junk bills are pushed through parliament sooner rather than later.

[CVO Chris]

Oh dear

[derricketo]

advertising pays for everything.

unfortunately there are no standards or controls, without those everything runs rampant

its a "free" age on the internet right now, i can download anything in a matter of minutes. I can contact people around the world. I can see porn of more genres than I care to EVER see with a matter of a few clicks.

it has its downs like those above.. but come on man, just think of all that PORNO

i kind of had a point, but lost it and now am going to do some google image searches with the safe function turned OFF

[aversion]

it's ridiculous security on even a home computer that any third party program should be able to send emails from your machine without at least a prompt. I can understand the benefits of other programs being able to see your address book but to use that address book and your own email account to send mail out without you ever being the wiser is dumb.

[mg33]

The people that send this stuff that accesses a computer intrusively should be held accountable just as someone would for hacking a site, if found and charged.

jamble-- what e-mail do you use? The server with my host has some nice filtering aspects, but I can't believe the stuff I have to write into it to keep it from getting to my inbox. I'm no innocent 12 year old or anything, but it's revolting the stuff that gets sent as spam.

mg33