

New York Times pop up add says your computer is infected, download malware fix - viggity
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/business/media/13note.html?_r=2

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brk
These kinds of popups always humor me. They put so much effort into making
them look EXACTLY like a Windows program or dialog box. And I'm using OS X,
they stand out like a sore thumb.

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zandorg
They could see your OS from your browser and send a different image...

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viggity
They could, but they don't. Why would they go through all that effort to snare
an extra 5% of computers

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jcl
Well, for one reason, that 5% is strongly correlated with people who could
afford a more expensive computer...

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locopati
More details here

<http://troy.yort.com/anatomy-of-a-malware-ad-on-nytimes-com>

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ilamont
This is a downside for media sites which use ad networks running low-quality,
unvetted ad programs.

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viggity
I got this on my home computer yesterday. I had a bunch of sites from hacker
news open and I couldn't tell which one spawned it. Now I know. Kind of scary,
it looked fairly authentic, certainly authentic enough to fool someone like my
mother.

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tl
They do fool my mother, who sees things like this constantly (constantly
enough to ask me about them a lot). The sad thing is that they're completely
obvious to me (an XP-based picture on her Vista laptop). If not for people
like my mother, I'd be completely ignorant of this matter given my linux box
at home and browsing habits.

