Major Rogue Anti-Virus Program Shut Down

Posted by timothy on Saturday March 21, 2009 @07:31AM from the now-stop-antivirus-people-from-spamming-slashdot dept.

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."

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Re:Amazing, credit card companies being useful! by PapayaSF · 2009-03-21 07:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Welcome to Public Relations 101. by khasim · 2009-03-21 07:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.