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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday January 10 2016, @02:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the those-bastards dept.

The Forbes 30 Under 30 list came out this week and it featured a prominent security researcher. Other researchers were pleased to see one of their own getting positive attention, and visited the site in droves to view the list.

On arrival, like a growing number of websites, Forbes asked readers to turn off ad blockers in order to view the article. After doing so, visitors were immediately served with pop-under malware, primed to infect their computers, and likely silently steal passwords, personal data and banking information. Or, as is popular worldwide with these malware "exploit kits," lock up their hard drives in exchange for Bitcoin ransom. The exploit used was a version of hackenfreude.

Forbes has recently taken some flack from Soylent News readers for its heavy-handed approach to ad blockers.


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 11 2016, @07:15PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 11 2016, @07:15PM (#288312) Journal

    I'm certainly not arguing about the "value" of Win10 - My only argument is that implementing spyware, adware, and malware blocking on the router has it's own value. If a customer should happen to need a new modem/router, it is well worth the investment to recomment one that can perform these functions. Even if the customer doesn't really "need" a new router, but he simply wishes to upgrade, you can recommend this. It's an idea with value, no matter what OS that customer happens to be running. It benefits me, primarily because my crappy 2 Mb connection won't support the garbage adware downloading to as many as six computers at a time. I don't own all of those computers, much less the telephones and tablets that family members use while at my house. Therefore, I can't install ad blocking or alter HOSTS files on all of them. But, I do own the router, and I block all that crap before the requests ever go out from all those devices. Meaning - even when two or three people are using my connection, I still have more bandwidth that I would have all alone, without adblocking and the rest.

    Yes, Win10 sucks worse than any OS that has ever preceded it, but Win10 isn't the only reason to control the connections going through your router. It's just one of the best reasons to block the crap.

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