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Coming Soon to a Wireless Hotspot Near You: Ads
mindless4210 writes "A new generation of spam is born with the launch of FreeFi's new Wi-Fi advertising network. It is the first service of its kind, with intentions of delivering ad content to hotspots around the world starting in mid-Summer. FreeFi's President, Lawrence Laffer, says that the service displays a 'persistent set of ads adjacent to the user's browser without use of invasive advertising software or pop-up ads.' He also claims '[their] market research indicates that, except for pop-ups, people really don't mind ads.'" This seems like the kind of thing that would keep me from using "free" wireless access, but I've a feeling I'm in the minority.
I will not run foreign code on my computer and nobody else should either. This is just a stepping stone to security vulerabilities that we should be trying to squash, not needlessly encourage.
A computer should be a tight ship. Not a leaky dingy like Microsoft Windows. They have independently spawed a whole category of spyware and malware that's automatically downloaded and executed through the web browser. Need we say more?