Sunday, February 19, 2006

Spammer Wins Gold in the Olympics

I guess it was bound to happen since they don't live in caves (though we may wish they lived in caves without Internet access):

There's already a tarnish on the gold medal won by Australian mogul skier Dale Begg-Smith at the Olympics in Turin this week.

While the 21-year-old Begg-Smith may not have been involved in doping or cheating on the slopes, the way he richly supported himself while training was incredibly unsportsmanlike and probably illegal: Begg-Smith was a key player in a company that infected other peoples' computers with adware a.k.a. spyware.

Canadian-born Begg-Smith is president of AdsCPM Network (a.k.a. CPM Media Inc.), a firm notorious for using "driveby downloads," security exploits, and other cheap tricks to install spyware (including keyloggers and browser hijackers) on unsuspecting Internet users' computers.

(Link via Confessions of a Political Junkie)