😉
During a brief “drive-by” watching some *shudder* TV (I have thins to watch on Hulu and other videos, but the thing was on and.. yeh, that *heh*) , some commercials aired that I thought from the presentation were for bogus products/services. One was for MyCL3anPC.c0m and another for D0ubleMySp33d.com. Notice the lack of linkage and the lame faux-obscuring of the sites’ names? *heh* That’s because anyone who visits these sites is apparently in for some computing hell. This guy has a typical review of the sites.
The short version? The ads are, IMO, come-ons, cons, commercial phishing expeditions designed to suck in naive, unwary computer users. As such, they are little different to the “Antivirus 2010 (2009, 2008…)” and variants that are such a plague. Both vectors for infesting one’s computer with what is apparently malware depend on naive users doing themselves in. In this day and age, naive computer users are very nearly an identity with “stupid computer users” since information about threats is so very prevalent, it takes almost willful ignorance to just blythely succumb to such things.
Now, the two relatively naive users I referred to in the post title are also relatively new to computer use, and they are coming up to speed as quickly as possible, so they get a “bye” on the “stupid” comment, but too many others out there just haven’t bothered to learn how to practice safe computing, so all y’all just use this short lil cautionary post to warn those you know, ‘K?
And another good thing about using a ‘nix computer: the app the company uses to mess with folks won’t work on ‘nix-based computers. Of course, I could have nstalled it using WINE on the Linux VM I used to double check that assumption, but why? 😉
NOTE: My opinion was colored by my initial exposure to the commercials, which promised unrealistic results and used unrealistic scare tactics,but the preponderance of commentary, as well as the detailed information presented at the site I linked formed my final opinion: ignore these ads and warn others off them.
Well, I finished my Hulu use for the night (just my Chuck addiction–to my not so secret shame *heh*) and thought I’d make note of one of the things that twigged me to the idea that the commercials were scams. Yeh, not making this as an addition to the post but as a comment. Variety is the spice of life or whatever. 😉
So, both commercials promised to fix folks’ computers online, including removal of viruses. Now, that is simply not always possible without physically sitting in front of the machine in question. Sure, there are ways to control machines remotely,and I use several different methods, depending on the hardware, software and wetware (users) on the other end. Those variables determine the best way(s) to implement remote access, and the ways that remote access can be used.
Of course, the ads only imply that folks’ computers will be fixed “remotely” so they can probably weasel their way out of that, but absent being physically present to perform some essential actions, many kinds of malware simply cannot be removed, and so their promises seemed hyperbolic at the best and likely bogus, optimally.