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Home Haaretz's Progressive Adware

Haaretz's Progressive Adware

- Haaretz, the last bastion of ideological socialism, apparently boasts some rather progressive views on adware and malware it seems. After using a friend's computer, I tested it in my own Internet Explorer, allowing Haaretz.com to be the only site in my browser. On several occasions the site suddenly switched over to Drivecleaner.com, a notorious malware company that then did its best to install its noxious program on my computer, disregarding numerous cancel messages and attempts to abort it, did its best to send a file to be installed on my computer. This was not triggered by clicking on any ad. In fact twice it occurred while I wasn't even using the browser.

Drive Cleaner is basically a rogue program in the malware, spyware, adware category and is commonly treated as the virus which it essentially is. DriveCleaner failed in its attempt to crawl into my computer but previous experiences with similar infections suggest that it would have promptly begun delivering pop up ads, installing other affiliate programs and thoroughly done its best to wreck my computer.

It's ironic for dedicated socialists like the folks at Haaretz to be so desperate for cash that they're prepared to infect their own readers with adware and malware just to make a little extra. That would be exactly the kind of rampantly greedy capitalist behavior that they would normally be condemning. Granted JPost's own ads have long since gone downmarket but it certainly hasn't gone downmarket enough to do what effectively amounts to leasing portions of their website to hackers. But then socialists are also notorious as the world's biggest hypocrites.

Comments

  1. Evil! Well they are off my list forever now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ditto here. Besides, Haaretz always confuses me. The few times I've read it, I've felt like I was going around in circles.

    I'll stick to Israeli news cites that are clearer and won't infect my computer.

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  3. Anonymous11/6/07

    Thanks for confirming that the source of the DriveCleaner malware is indeed Haaretz. I have so many tabs open at once that I can rarely tell where anything is coming from.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous19/8/07

    Same with me...I had suspected it was haaretz, but it was confirmed when the same thing started happening to me on my computer at work.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've got a mac so, I'm not worried about the malware actually getting into my system, but this is damned annoying. It comes up at some point EVERY time I'm on the Haaretz website. My solution for now is to just throw it back at them, by taking up their bandwidth and emailing them back a screen capture every time Drivecleaner hijacks my browser from their site. Send yours too:

    amos schocken - ceo
    aschocken@haaretz.co.il

    yossi warshavsky - managing director
    yosver@haaretz.co.il

    aviva bronstein - english edition
    avivab@haaretz.co.il

    grig davidowitz - online editor
    grigd@haaretz.co.il

    sara miller - english internet ed
    saram@haaretz.co.il

    bradley burston - sr ed english internet
    bburston@haaretz.co.il

    ReplyDelete

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