Best white hat scam of the month: security researcher Didier Stevens bought a Google ad six months ago that said, "Is your PC virus-free? Get it infected here!" 409 people clicked on the ad -- people who would have been owned up or infested with malware had Stevens been a true scammer instead of a security geek with a weird sense of humor. Stevens writes:
It's hard to say whether people clicked on the ad because they assumed it was a joke, or because they simply misread it as an anti-virus ad. Still, the numbers are pretty scary. The other shocker here is that Google, which does quite a bit of policing on ad content, didn't notice the scammy ad. Stevens says, "I designed my ad to make it suspect, but even then it was accepted by Google without problem and I got no complaints to date." Apparently, he's still running the ad, with slightly different experimental parameters. Can't wait to see what he finds out next . . .
Get It Infected Here Experiment [via Didier Stevens]
