Total Telecom – Online ad sales open door to viruses

Total Telecom – Online ad sales open door to viruses

A good deal of the Internet is, for better or worse, funded by advertising. Stories like this show just how shaky of a foundation this might be.

Viruses can be incorporated directly within an ad, so that simply clicking on the ad or visiting the site can infect a computer, or ads can be used to direct users to a nefarious Web site that aims to steal passwords or identities. In most cases, the problem becomes apparent within a matter of hours and quick fixes are put in place, but that’s not fast enough for Internet surfers whose computers end up infected or compromised.

If Internet users loose faith in their ability to click an advertisement, ad revenue will decline. If ad revenue declines, companies like Google or (insert newspaper name here) will be hard pressed to continue operating at no cost to the bulk of their users. While a business model change might not be a bad idea, problems like this show just how quickly the landscape of the Internet might change.

I wonder if we can categorize this as a browser bug? Could Firefox/Safari/Opera/IE/etc lock themselves up tight enough to prevent malware, or do we need more trusted computing (or Macs)?