15 ms·
New York Times pop up add says your computer is infected, download malware fix
- viggity 17y agoI 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.
- tl 17y agoThey 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.
- brk 17y agoThese 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.
- zandorg 17y agoThey could see your OS from your browser and send a different image...
- viggity 17y agoThey could, but they don't. Why would they go through all that effort to snare an extra 5% of computers
- Skeuomorph 17y agoI screen-grabbed it on the iPhone--looked like a fish out of water. If their code really did provide an Explorer interface on the iPhone it'd be almost worth installing on purpose.
- ilamont 17y agoThis is a downside for media sites which use ad networks running low-quality, unvetted ad programs.
- locopati 17y agoMore details here http://troy.yort.com/anatomy-of-a-malware-ad-on-nytimes-com http://troy.yort.com/anatomy-of-a-malware-ad-on-nytimes-com