Porn sites can do than just shock your eyeballs with impressively erotic images. A new extortion scheme forces the site’s visitors to pay for full subscriptions, otherwise their computers will be flooded with permanent pop-up ads.
Digital Journal — You’re visiting a porn site. Innocent enough. Maybe you stumbled upon it by accident (yeah right). The site promises free access for three days and you download the trial period. But you notice a stream of pop-up ads appearing on your screen afterward, even when you’re offline, asking for more payment for additional access to the porn site.
These ads last for 10 minutes and appear on top of any windows. They remain on the computer, even when the PC is rebooted.
This new scheme is tantamount to extortion, say researchers at security vendor McAfee Inc.’s Avert Labs.
This new annoyance disables someone’s computer by installing malicious code that can’t be removed. Pop-up ads fly around the screen, requesting $80 for 90 days’ worth of additional access. Even more troubling is a section in the site’s Terms and Conditions about ignoring the pop-ups: “If you choose to ignore the payment reminders and do not pay the Membership Fee, you hereby understand and acknowledge that the prompt reminders may become more frequent and that you may lose the ability to use your computer until you have submitted payment. The payment reminders will be active while your computer is online or offline.”
Yes, you read that right — the site is threatening to disable computers that don’t pay the requested fee. McAfee’s Seth Purdy wrote: “What it appears they are doing is, in my humble opinion, a form of extortion based on the (usually correct) assumption that a person’s computer will be key to many other activities in their daily life.”
There’s something disgusting about this underhanded tactic. In fact, it’s downright criminal. Compelling visitors to pay for full access, while bombarding them with pop-up ads? If the Web has taught us anything, it’s that people don’t want to be hoodwinked, or better yet, they don’t want to be irritated by crap they don’t want. Perhaps the curious porn site visitor wanted a three-day trial period to see what’s what; should that visitor be punished by a site that only seeks to coerce payment?
It’s not enough for McAfee to simply report the wrongdoing. The $13 billion porn industry has made its mark online, so the next sensible step would be to protect those who are fuelling that market. The Better Business Bureau or its equivalent should get involved. Let’s fact it — people will visit porn sites and that will never change. Porn will always be attractive to Net surfers. And like any ecommerce hub, skin sites should reflect the times — protect, and respect, the consumer.
