I'm writing this while babysitting my computer which is currently running a set of Norton scans. I've been here for several hours and I don't really dare move away for long because Internet Explorer keeps launching so it can show me PORNO sites and that slows down my Norton scans, could hijack them altogether. My laptop is infected. This is the THIRD laptop that's been infected by this nasty thing and I've written about the Nasty Geeks before. It's also jacked my Firefox this time as well as the usual IE attack and I'm drafting in Open Office because I can't even open a Word file right now!
I am beyond furious with the amount of my time that gets sucked up dealing with crap on my computer from hacker/hijacker/whatevers. I want to HUNT these people down. Once that's done, I'll figure out what to do next. If they're here in the US or in some other civilized nation, I'm sure there's a way to sue them and get a big fat judgment as well as getting them jailed for a nice long stint. If they're in some third world country with no civilized law, all the better. Life is damned cheap in those places and I have no problem going with whatever the local custom is to deal with people who would steal en masse by trespassing upon our computers.
I mean, seriously, this is no different than walking inside my home and ripping out my hard drive. It doesn't matter that I can fix it with time and money. That isn't the point. The point is you took what belongs to me and you meant to hold it hostage until you got a fee or just to permanently deprive me of use of my property. Either way, it's trespassing and theft and other crimes and the damages add up as it's a recurring assault.
We all depend on these damned electronics and the internet now; the economies around the world depend upon them. Yet no one really seems to be doing much to rid us all of these extraordinary and repeated invasions, trespasses, and thefts. WTF?
I want some kind of gadget on my computer that tracks every bit and byte that comes in and tracks back to those doing me harm. It can't be all that hard to do. We've had the ability to trace telephone calls for how long now? And that goes back to analog. This is all digital electronics. Come on, it's got to be possible to hunt these creeps down!
I love geeks of all kinds. You might have noticed I'm more than a little lawyer/accountant geeky myself. I know you computer geeks can figure out how to hunt these BAD Nasty Geeks, these criminals, down. Surely you've got better things to do than constantly cleaning up after the damages they do. Please tell me you don't depend on the income from cleaning up this kind of crap to the extent you won't help GET THEM. Come on, tell us what needs to happen to get these evil hackers who give all geeks a bad rep.
I wrote most of that yesterday afternoon and one of the nasties I'm dealing with is that THING that keeps launching windows say "your computer is infected, click here" (this time it arrived via a redirect/hijack window that to my computer to its download website while I was walking a dog for all of 10 minutes!) and I just can't understand why the companies that sell protective software would put a "hit" on the people who pass that nasty thing around. Since it keeps coming back around, clearly they can't stay on top of it very well with our protective software.
And while we're at "getting" these people, we need to push for modification of what's called the American Rule, the default rule that says each party pays its own lawyers and costs in litigation. The British Rule requires the loser to pay and is equally poor as a default. How about the AB rule that assesses those legal fees and costs based on fault and intent? Seriously, if you intend to hurt someone, you shouldn't be able to depend on a default rule that will force someone else to pay to sue you!
In the meantime, there are statutes that specifically allow one to collect legal fees and costs upon winning a lawsuit and it's amazing how few lawyers see to be unaware how to get themselves paid so always hunt down those "get paid" provisions as well as the laws you want to sue under before you ever pick up the phone to call lawyers to represent you. In this case of a viral program offering to sell us an anti-viral program, it might well fall under Deceptive Trade Practices laws as well as fraud laws. Those tend to have both private and public prosecutions available so we should be able to recruit some AGs for assistance. I know I want this CRAP of swiping my computer and time to STOP. How about you?
I've already got some decent protection on my computer but my friends advised more stuff to add/change last night. So, now I get to spend a day, maybe 2, maybe 5, dealing with computer stuff caused by Nasty Geeks and I want all the Angel Geeks to pitch in and help crush those Nasty Geeks. This is one of those entries I'll encourage you to copy/paste to email and spread like spam. We've gotten way to willing to put up with other people sucking up our time and we need to get Mad as Hell over this issue too. Please include a link back here in those emails though so we'll all be "on the same page", so to speak. I'm not asking for that link inclusion for the reasons you might think but that's a topic for another day :)