Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Apparently people actually fall for those things.

You know those ads you see on the internet all the time says things like "your IP is being broadcast" and "You computer has been scanned and is running too slow" and things of that nature.
Well today I was having coffee with one of the Vice Presidents in the hospital and he mentioned how he had gotten a warning that he had spyware on his computer. My mind sees the "You computer is infected with Spyware" fake windows warning message ad that you see on some sites, so I laugh and say "Haha, ya thats such a scam and bad advertising".
HE says "Well I downloaded the Spyware scanning it linked me to and it found spyware on my computer".
I am aghast at this point and just staring at him. I had never met anyone who actually fell for that before.
He continued "And after it scanned it said it couldn't remove it unless I bought it, so I did"
My jaw literally dropped. If he fell for it, how many other people have? My faith in humanity remains very low.
So I'm like, "well as long as you are happy with your purchase I guess. I just always assume those ads where scams", and smiled weakly. I did mention about AdAware and how it was free, but he seemed pretty happy with his spyware scanner that almost certainly is spyware itself. But I guess people can do what they want with their computers and pay me later to fix them :) .

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