{"id":217,"date":"2006-05-24T19:36:25","date_gmt":"2006-05-25T02:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pdxtc.com\/wpblog\/archives\/217"},"modified":"2014-12-04T13:46:18","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T20:46:18","slug":"a-virus-with-a-purpose-to-steal-our-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pdxtc.com\/wpblog\/spyware\/a-virus-with-a-purpose-to-steal-our-money\/","title":{"rendered":"A Virus With a Purpose &#8211; To Steal Our Money"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Viruses used to be just like graffiti, designed to satisfy only an egotistical itch, but now they can make the creators money. Someone&#8217;s created a virus that takes peoples over computers, then goes out one the web, and clicks on ads\u00a0that\u00a0make\u00a0website owners money.\u00a0It&#8217;s\u00a0pretty diabolical, like something from a Saurday morning cartoon.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a method of avdertising on the web called PPC or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pdxtc.com\/search-engine-marketing.php\">Pay Per Click Advertising<\/a>.\u00a0Since it&#8217;s inception, Pay Per Click advertising\u00a0been somewhat exploitable. It started with\u00a0competitors\u00a0clicking on\u00a0each others ads,\u00a0and has blossomed into somewhat of a\u00a0national controversy, recently causing google to be on the losing end of a 90 million dollar settlement. (<em>Of course,\u00a0a properly protected PPC campaign is still a good use of marketing dollars, but that&#8217;s another story.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Theres also a Google\u00a0business opportunity\u00a0called Google Adsense, that allows\u00a0website owners who\u00a0to get a small piece of the\u00a0Google revenue when the Google\u00a0ads are\u00a0clicked.\u00a0(I participate in this too, so please do not click on any of my\u00a0ads, unless you&#8217;re really interested. It costs website owners money.)<\/p>\n<p>Now, according to several websites, including ZDNet,\u00a0 &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pandasoftware.com\/\">PandaLabs<\/a>\u00a0has detected <em>a network of computers infected with the bot Clickbot.A, which is being used to defraud \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpay per click\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 systems,<\/em> registering clicks automatically and providing lucrative returns for the creators. According to the data collected so far, the scam is exploiting a global network comprising <strong>more than 34,000 zombie computers<\/strong> (those infected by the bot).\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Wow. This one is going to\u00a0open of the floodgates on copycats.\u00a0For years I&#8217;ve been begging people in articles I&#8217;ve written to\u00a0protect themselves\u00a0better with a little knowledge about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pdxtc.com\/spywarekgw.php\">spyware and antivirus protection<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0I&#8217;ll shout it now&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Be\u00a0sure and use spyware and antivirus protection&#8230;please&#8230;for the rest of us!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Viruses used to be just like graffiti, designed to satisfy only an egotistical itch, but now they can make the creators money. Someone&#8217;s created a virus that takes peoples over computers, then goes out one the web, and clicks on ads\u00a0that\u00a0make\u00a0website owners money.\u00a0It&#8217;s\u00a0pretty diabolical, like something from a Saurday morning cartoon. There&#8217;s a method of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spyware","category-viruses-and-scams"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A Virus With a Purpose - To Steal Our Money<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Viruses used to be just like graffiti, designed to satisfy only an egotistical itch, but now they can make the creators money. Someone&#039;s created a virus\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pdxtc.com\/wpblog\/spyware\/a-virus-with-a-purpose-to-steal-our-money\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Virus With a Purpose - To Steal Our Money\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Viruses used to be just like graffiti, designed to satisfy only an egotistical itch, but now they can make the creators money. 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