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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."
I think that's the issue. You can't accept dirty money... running it through your transaction gateway has no down side for the credit card companies. Now if they were responsible for a percentage of the damages...
Unfortunately $100K/week isn't the full extent of the scam, it's just one slice of the money. The article only says that top affiliates made that much individually, and they only break down the Top 10 affiliates for 4 separate two-week periods (which adds up to almost $2M over that time). There is no mention of how many total affiliates there were or how much money they brought in as a group, but even the glimpse of the Top 10 makes it clear that it's much more than $100K/week when you add up the entire take.
The problem is that the laws and the penalties are too relaxed for crimes like these.
A more severe penalty for involvement in fraud crimes would make many more a lot more vigilant when it comes to strangling that kind of behavior.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
IMO, Visa and MC SHOULD have "had to do it". They move money around the world, 24/7, in amounts that are astronomical, as well as minute. There is almost no one who understands the flow of money better than Visa and MC. They cannot be totally ignorant of the illegality and the immorality of some of their customers. Sure, they may be ignorant for awhile, but after a few dozen complaints from customers, they become aware. (Yeah, I read, and I understand, MOST customers fail to report these crimes, for fear of embarrasment - but SOME report them) Visa, MC, and any other corporation that moves large sums of money on a daily basis has to bear some responsiblity, if only the responsibility of reporting the crimes, then awaiting orders from law enforcement.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br