Malware on the Move

I was reading an article from Window Secrets this morning at 6:00 AM (in a hotel room, what else does a geek do?) and I wanted to pass along an excellent article in the newsletter.

The folks there offer a free and paid version of their newsletter. I have to say that after trying their free version, I decided to spend my hard-earned shekels for their paid subscription, and have not regretted it. It’s a newsletter for savvy Windows users, (as opposed to us more technical folks on TechTarget) but I frequently find tools and tips I’d like to have. Their list of freeware tools is outstanding AND examined for malware.

The article, by Susan Bradley starts out with the headline, The ads served by Bing and Google along with your search results are linking more and more often to sites trying to infect your machine.

This is not good news.

It seems that the major search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing are looking the other way when evil people buy up popular search terms. When you click on the link, malware is installed through your browser. The search engines are not “vetting” the ads to make sure they are clean.

Susan suggests, and I’m inclined to agree, that the search engines know about this issue, but aren’t willing to police the ads because they are making so much money.

It’s possible to become infected, simply by viewing the sites. Not too long ago, the the New York Times reported on itself because an ad they posted infected subscribers.

Time for the search engines to start policing their ads.