Click Here To Infect Your PC!

Email me for FREE viruses writes "Just how many people would click an ad saying "Is your PC virus-free? Get it infected here!"? According to the security researcher who ran that very ad on Google for 6 months, 0.16% (409 of 259,723) would click on it. 98% of those people were running Windows. The Google Adwords campaign cost $23 in total, which works out to $0.06 per infection had the site actually been malicious."

Comments

Underserved group

[Nymz]

At a click rate of 0,16% - about one in 600 - I have to wonder if not a fairly large portion is simple click errors.

At first I thought the same thing, just random misclicks. But then it hit me, there are a large number of users on the internet that don't have the know-how to install a virus on a computer of someone they hate, like an uppity coworker.

Imagine a bussiness model that would allow anyone to simply 1-click and install a virus (not a feature, those are patentable). Revenue would be generated with advertisments downloaded by the trojan, that would popup at random times on the victims computer. In essence, the victim would have to pay for the service. Brilliant!

Browser stats

[locofungus]

The comments give the browser stats:

335 - some version of IE
52 - Some version of Firefox
5 - other

That gives Firefox a 15% share.

Tim.

Re:Browser stats

[ArsenneLupin]

Ha! I was going to suggest that firefox users are more "educated" and less likely to click on a link. It's not so simple. Their education allows them to know that they should not click on such a link in IE. But it also tells them to run Firefox. While running Firefox, especially on Linux, they would have no risk, and curiosity will win.

It might be more interesting (but harder to obtain) a statistic broken down not only by the browser which user is currently using, but also by browser which they usually use. Here an "usual Firefox user currently stuck on IE" might be less likely to click on such a link. But such data can unfortunately not be obtained, short of asking user directly.

Hmmm, and even in that case, the behavior might not be what would be expected. A "usual Firefox user currently stuck on IE" might still click on that link, in order to teach the party who stuck him on IE a lesson... Tricky, tricky...

On the whole though I'd assume that there were the roughly same proportion of idiots in each camp Not necessarily. As shown above, both idiots and smart people might click on the link. But they would do so for different reasons.

Huh?

[julesh]

Last time I ran a Google Adwords campaign, they'd drop your advert if you get less than a threshold clickthrough rate. I think it was 0.5%. It was certainly higher than 0.16%. So how did they do this? Have Google dropped that restriction?

or cache pre-fetch

[jamesh]

Would any aggressive cache pre-fetch engines follow links like this?

I worked with a guy...

[httpamphibio.us]

He comes into work one day and you can tell by looking at him that he's pissed. He goes into the break room to get ready for the shift so I go back there and ask him what's wrong.

He says, "I'm need a new ****ing computer."
I ask why...
"because the one I have now is too slow. I can't use the web because I get hundreds of popups."
I tell him that's a pretty easy thing to fix and off to burn a CD and write up some directions for him.
He tells me that won't work... again, I ask why.
"Because I'm ****ing sick of Microsoft."
I tell him I totally understand that, but that his problem with the pop-ups is pretty easy to fix.
He says, "No, it's not. I click on all the Windows that ask me if I want to remove the viruses from my computer and they are always charging me $20-$40 per virus. I spent almost $400 last week!"

Another computer savvy employee had joined the conversation by this point and we both looked at each other in complete disbelief. The guy wasn't joking...