[Hidden-tech] Beware the Facebook thingy-dingy redux

[R. David Murray]

On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:01:52 -0500, Michael Billingsley <michaelb at sover.net> wrote:
> Just a note that - I was my own guinea pig.  I presumed that the  
> Chilean source-server was identical to the Romanian one, so rather  
> than dangerously clicking on the URL in the email (which would have  
> obviously handed my computer to the "loader") I went instead to the  
> domain server directly, to see if it also self-identified as being  
> slaved to TeamViewer software.
> 
> Rather than just say so (which the Romanian server did) it  
> proceeded... while showing a blank screen... "load"   I immediately  
> yanked my Ethernet cable and killed the page, with hopes that it  
> didn't get its packet into my machine and was only able to use those  
> few seconds to scan for my Operating System (OS).   However, for a  
> modern computer a few seconds are aeons and enable multiple back-and- 
> forth conversations and exchanges of data.  Certainly it got my  
> machine ID and domain address for future reference... not a good thing.
> 
> My laptop (from which I'd done this... with all firewalls up and all  
> external drives disconnected) immediately began to act a little  
> dodgy.  The rest of the afternoon was marked by a duplicate  
> RealPlayer Downloader jumping in and acting in tandom (in other words  
> - duplicating and parallel downloading) every clip I encountered on  
> the Internet for the rest of the afternoon, ie. newsfeeds.   So I  

How can just going to a web page install software on your machine?
Is OS X really that broken?  (I know Windows is, but I thought
OS X was smarter than that).

Makes me glad I'm running Linux :)  I've installed the firefox noscript
extension just in case, though.

--
R. David Murray                                      www.bitdance.com
Business Process Automation - Network/Server Management - Routers/Firewalls