ok I'm pissed. My grandmother who recently got a computer and has broadband (I tried to talk her out of it since all she'll do is email, play cards and whatever else but she lives alone and needs to be entertained) anyway she mistyped a URL and had her homepage hijacked and lots of porn in her browser bookmarks and all. She was so frustrated so I drove over there before work tonight and cleaned her system but it just made me so mad and I could blame M$ crappy browser and security settings but this time I'm blaming these scum companies that do this kind of sh**!! I wonder why hardcore hackers never hack these kind of sites? I mean my grandmother called her ISP and wanted to cancel service but I helped her through it all. Wack!! Just Wack!!

What I dont get is why they try to force porn on you. They must think that anyone that receives it is going to like it. Dont they understand that people dont want to have to deal with this situation, If its porn of not. It should be completely illegal to change someones homepage, send bulk emails, solicite anything for sale using someones email address and invading someones computer in any way. Just as its illegal to place something in someones home mailbox without it going through the post office.

it's called marketing. why don't you complain about t-shirts with brand name logo's, or huge banners on buses and buildings, since those are forced on you too. commercials on television, newspapers, magazines, the list of advertising mediums is endless.

94gsr its not the same....for one there arent teenage chicks naked on the side of buses (LOL!!) and number two people don't bust in your house with magazines spread wide open forcing them in your face. I understand what you're saying but thats NOT MARKETING...its invasion and you should have a right to file lawsuits against such companies if you could ever track em.

Actually, in Sweden/Stockholm, the Post Office bust into our homes magazines with commercials every Monday and Thursday. I've to admit that sometimes there's good, cheap stuff, but twice a week is way too much garbage, to do not say how many trees they had to cut off to make that junk. I (and many others) use a primitive "mail-filter" though: we put outside our doors a note: "No commercials or free newspapers here...", lol. Sad, but true

LOL, I complain about ugly billboards and lame advertising on buses all the time. Its the fact that they invade your privacy to do it. A bus or banner is in public view and not harrassing, my computer is my private space and should not be subjected to some nazi-capitalist invasion.

okay, deep breath, and repeat the Malware Mantra: AVG, Adaware, Spybot, Windows Update, Firefox, Thunderbird, Firewall.

The Malware Mantra takes care of about 95% of my computer repair business.

Oh, and you can take advantage of the broadband- instead of AVG, use clamwin, which you can configure to email you if it finds anything.

clamwin.sourceforge.net

i meant ads in general, porn, casino, debt, warez, or whatever.

the internet is not your private space. the computer (which is yours) is just the medium in which to access the public internet.

as much as i dislike internet ads, since it forces me to click the X to close the window, it is still totally lawful and advertising is totally necessary.

crazyeddie740: i consider windows update a invasion of privacy, and as such i see it as malware (as updates are no good anyways as they wait years before releasing them)

SciYro you have an option not to install an update though... with spyware alot of this stuff just downloads automatically

94gsr I'm sure if some of these companies or people could be tracked down then major lawsuits could be filed against them...

Just do the criticals, and run adaware and spybot afterwards. The nasty stuff usually comes in the "Windows" updates, which is just stuff that microsoft thinks it would be nice if you had. At least update patches old holes so you don't get zapped by a two year old worm. Or I suppose you could try migrating your grandma to linux....

Anyway, if anybody's interested, I have a doc I made for my customers that walks them through how to do windows update, run adaware and spybot, and update avg. Let me know if you want it, and i'll email it to you.

you know that porn site are visited more than google

so i've heard- i wonder how many of those hits are voluntary. As a friend of mine pointed out, we may be the first generation to get upset when we get free pr0n.

True, the Intenet is not your private space, but your PC is your private property, and the original poster was not talking simply about popups. You seem to take the position that company's should be free to take any steps they desire if the end result is that they get their advertising messages out to the public, but from my point of view it would be absurd to suggest that malware that hijacks your browser, changes your homepage, and replaces your bookmarks with links to objectionable websites, etc, is simply just a marketing tactic. With any legitimate marketing efforts, such as billboards, TV or radio commercials, magazine ads, etc, the consumer always has the option to simply ignore the ad. With malware however, consumers don't have that option --- these alleged "marketing" techniques are destructive and unwelcome, and are performed without the consumer's advance knowledge or consent. Basically, this is just vandalism.

I doubt very much that if you found yourself in the same situation as the original poster described, ie, you powered up your PC one day only to discover that all your bookmarks were gone, your Email contacts were toast, and anytime you tried to use the browser it kept redirecting you to another site, that you would simply laugh it off as clever marketing. It's one thing to passively display an ad on a webpage, but it's an entirely different thing to hijack somebody's machine and change its behavior without their permission, consent, or advance knowledge, which exactly what malware does. -- J.W.