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Major Rogue Anti-Virus Program Shut Down
krebsatwpost writes "TrafficConverter.biz, one of the more notorious pay-per-install affiliate programs, was dismantled this week after media attention caused Visa and Mastercard to shut down the group's payment operations. The action comes just a few days after a report by The Washington Post that showed some affiliates were making more than $100,000 USD a week installing rogue anti-virus software. The credit card industry may have been spurred by the fact that the first version of the Conficker worm told infected systems to download a file from TrafficConverter, although the story posits that this could have been an attempted Joe Job rather than a blatant attempt to drum up more installs."
$3,000/week isn't a big enough chunk of change to compensate for the damage to their corporate image that would result if it became widely known they were knowingly doing business with such an outfit.
Power does not corrupt - power attracts the corrupt.
That's nothing.
First that figure is from just ONE affiliate.
Then add in all the money they were making from chargebacks too.
Dual Opteron < $600
I wonder why this doesn't happen more often. The vast majority of online scams (fake drugs, etc.) and spammers get their money through credit cards. Why not more effort to cut off their source of funds? It seems like a weak point in the operations.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Yes. Because those thousands of people every year don't have the public impact that a news story does.
This has been going on for YEARS and the credit card companies NEVER took any action before now. Because the credit card companies were getting their share of the loot.
Now that the PR problem might be more costly than their share of the fraud, they take action.
While I'm glad these guys were shut down, Mastercard and Visa shouldn't have had to do it. This case constitutes outright fraud, and the perpetrators should be punished like other criminals: with handcuffs, a jury, and iron bars.
We used to have strong consumer protection agencies. Then something happened. How many more electronic Elixir Sulfanilamide incidents (or real ones for that matter) do we need before we re-create the strong and sensible regulatory bodies that used to protect us?
I'm surprised visa/MC actually shut them down.
3% of 100k/week is a decent chunk of change.
But not much in their overall operations, if you look at VISA and MC themselves.
The biggest hurdle is finding out exactly who the VISA/MC service provider really is, since most people scammed don't want the embarrassment of reporting it.
I doubt the service provider is a "real" bank, most likely it's one of the many non-bank providers who do it for the money, since that would be big money to them.
VISA and M/C should do more to police their service providers and enforce the contracts already in place.
Make a bet? Decent lawyers can keep you out of jail for _years_, and even help you avoid extradition, or help keep you in a milder white collar prison where you are far less likely to discover what needing real virus protection is like.
I guess we'll hear right-wing radio decrying this as yet one more example of government interference stifling innovation in the marketplace.
Apologies, but I couldn't resist.
I guess I'll hear Leftist radio .... nevermind.
No one that can drive listens to left wing radicals.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?