A Virus With a Purpose – To Steal Our Money

Look how old this is!
I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 18 years 6 months 1 day ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.

Viruses used to be just like graffiti, designed to satisfy only an egotistical itch, but now they can make the creators money. Someone’s created a virus that takes peoples over computers, then goes out one the web, and clicks on ads that make website owners money. It’s pretty diabolical, like something from a Saurday morning cartoon.

There’s a method of avdertising on the web called PPC or Pay Per Click Advertising. Since it’s inception, Pay Per Click advertising been somewhat exploitable. It started with competitors clicking on each others ads, and has blossomed into somewhat of a national controversy, recently causing google to be on the losing end of a 90 million dollar settlement. (Of course, a properly protected PPC campaign is still a good use of marketing dollars, but that’s another story.)

Theres also a Google business opportunity called Google Adsense, that allows website owners who to get a small piece of the Google revenue when the Google ads are clicked. (I participate in this too, so please do not click on any of my ads, unless you’re really interested. It costs website owners money.)

Now, according to several websites, including ZDNet,  “PandaLabs has detected a network of computers infected with the bot Clickbot.A, which is being used to defraud ‘pay per click’ systems, 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 more than 34,000 zombie computers (those infected by the bot).”

Wow. This one is going to open of the floodgates on copycats. For years I’ve been begging people in articles I’ve written to protect themselves better with a little knowledge about spyware and antivirus protection.  I’ll shout it now…

Be sure and use spyware and antivirus protection…please…for the rest of us!

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