Malware Maladies

After eight days of this Whack-A-Mole game, I am now wondering if it is I who was the mole all along. Its either that or the mole got the mallet away from me and got in some licks of his own.

I'm seeing red and I don't know if it is an incipient migraine aura or fury at the chutzpa of these villains. I feel violated and invaded. These cretins have stolen my bandwidth, my CPU, my time, my peace of mind, my RAM and C drive memory. Why is this even almost OK? With anyone? Do the legitimate businesses whose ads are being shown know and have any complicity in how the service they are paying for is being implemented. If they don't know then they should be aware that their product is being presented in a manner guaranteed to piss off any potential customer. Not that I would ever be a potential customer of something called 'Bodycandy' whatever that is.

I've spent over six hours in the last 48 reading the cookies in my temporary files. Not my preferred reading matter. Especially in 9pt font. But it was informative. I know that dozens of ads left traces of themselves there which I never viewed. So does that mean some businesses are being scammed too? Paying for views of their page that were only virtual views and not actual views by human eyes? Some of these pages are registering upwards of fifty views in just two or three days.

And one of their tricks is to set the expiration date on the cookie to some time in 2012 or 2028 and then refuse to allow you to delete it. Another is to use an ISP or server identifier instead of a URL and then change it periodically so that banning it doesn't solve the problem. So I'm guessing the ISP are probably false because who can change ISP or servers every 24 to 72 hours?

This whole experience is making me rethink getting involved in either hosting ads or someday buying ad space online. The thought of it today is making me feel dirty. Like I've stepped in a mole hole and discovered the delightful garden is sitting atop a large warren of muddy tunnels and slimy hidey-holes.