A colleague forwarded this along to me from eWeek:
People will click on anything.
That was evidenced by the 409 people who clicked on an ad that offers infection for those with virus-free PCs. The ad, run by a person who identifies himself as security professional Didier Stevens, reads like this:
Drive-By Download
Is your PC virus-free?
Get it infected here!
drive-by-download.infoStevens, who says he works for Contraste Europe, a branch of the IT consultancy The Contraste Group, has been running his Google Adwords campaign for six months now and has received 409 hits. Stevens has done similar research in the past, such as finding out how easy it is to land on a drive-by download site when doing a Google search.
In a posting about the drive-by download campaign, Stevens says that he got the idea after picking up a small book on Google Adwords at the library and finding out how easy and cheap it is to set up an ad.
The point of this entry? Well, pay attention to what you click, not everyone on the ‘net has your best interests at heart. Be safe out there! Malware and spyware really are just a click away, often hidden behind things that look familiar or are misleading. Clicking is, of course, fun, but don’t forget to be a little skeptical, particularly if a site doesn’t look quite right.
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Should have been 419 suckers. That would be perfectly ironic.
That’s so true…