Life-Ruining Browser Hijackers

LehiNephi writes "If you're not diligent enough at whacking malware on your computer, you could end up in jail, whether or not you actually did something wrong. Hijacked browsers can not only annoy you with a never-ending string of pop-ups, they leave a less-than-virtuous browser history behind on your computer. This guy claims that some piece of malware hijacked his home page, opened an unstoppable chain of pop-ups, and filled his cache with porn. He now has to register as a sex offender, even though he denies that he did anything his computer says he did. Makes me glad for built in pop-up blocking in Mozilla."

Comments

Re:You can't laugh this off, not even with Mozilla

[swtaarrs]

You can't hide behind Mozilla -or anything for the matter. Malware no longer requires you to click 'ok' to something. It just hijacks your system on page load.

This isn't true with Mozilla/Opera/Konquerer/Anything that's not IE. Get your facts straight.

The browser made me do it!

[erroneus]

He should sue Microsoft and make it as high-profile as possible.

The fact is that this software DOES exist... software that installs itself and runs just by hitting a web page... either by playing on the ignorance of its users or by exploiting holes or "functions" offered by Microsoft.

This leaves these consumer grade operating systems capable of running code without the users consent or even knowledge. Running a program on someone's machine without permission which includes opening web sites via pop-ups is nothing short of piracy... stealing resources without permission.

Sue Microsoft for making it possible. Sue the pop-up people for abusing our machines. Sue the spyware people too. If in fact writing viruses and spreading them is illegal, then why isn't spyware illegal for the same reasons? Why doesn't it apply to pop-ups? Why not to code that modifies our settings to their advantage?

Re:The browser made me do it!

[t_allardyce]

I dunno, on slashdot everyone always says "fix a problem at the bottleneck" - which means you stop something at the source instead of the mass of problems it creates. People who write worms and spyware are assholes but really arnt they just opertunists? Theres really only one source that you can safely attribute to all problems. One company thats produced faulty product after faulty product since the 80's. There may be plenty of burglers but the world's biggest Window manufacturer has fitted faulty locks and frames for years and while... well i cant really think of another real-life example of one company's actions allowing so much crime.