The Internet is a fantastic entity and my life would be entirely different without it. Maybe I'd have become an architect if my Dad hadn't introduced me to computers and set our family up with Prodigy 10 or so years ago. I wouldn't have my job today without the Internet, that's for sure. In other words, I really, really like the Internet.
But sometimes, I come across things on the Web that just about push me over the edge.
I know I make a lot of cracks about the general public's ability to (ab)use their computers, but that's no excuse for intentionally and deliberately praying on this fact for profit. Not long ago, the hot "business practice" making use of this was the spam through the Windows Messenger service. A (somewhat) useful local network administration tool was rendered useless by the devil spawn of the Internet, spammers. I can't begin to count the number of friends and family that I helped disable this service on their computers.
What happened today was another one of those moments for me. I was at work and it was about 9am when my wife signed on to AOL Instant Messenger and informed me that my laptop had a window on it that said "Infected by XMLRPC virus, click OK to remove". This was incredibly shocking to me since I had just patched XP on the laptop yesterday after Microsoft announced more vulnerabilites. It's also incredible since the machine is behind a router that blocks that port.
Luckily, I had just installed RealVNC on the machine for just such a circumstance. I logged in to the machine and discovered that a web page my wife had just visited popped up a JavaScript message box with the virus warning. They were, of course, trying to sell you some anti-virus program or other. She didn't know whether or not the message was legit. She knows I have an anti-virus program installed on the machine and she knows to tell me whenever something funny happens on the computer.
I'm not surprised this kind of junk happens, but it's infuriating nonetheless.