Browser Hijackers Ruining Lives
http://www.wired.com/
By: Michelle Delio
May 11, 2004
Browser hijackers are doing more than just changing homepages. They are also changing some peoples’ lives for the worse.
Browser hijackers are malicious programs that change browser
settings, usually altering designated default start and search pages.
But some, such as CWS, also produce pop-up ads for pornography, add
dozens of bookmarks — some for extremely hard-core pornography
websites — to Internet Explorer’s Favorites folder, and can redirect
users to porn websites when they mistype URLs.
Traces of browsed sites can remain on computers, and it’s difficult
to tell from those traces whether a user willingly or mistakenly
viewed a website. When those traces connect to borderline-criminal
websites, people may have a hard time believing that their employee or
significant other hasn’t been spending an awful lot of time cruising
adult sites.
In response to a recent Wired News story about the CWS browser
hijacker, famed for peddling porn, several dozen readers sent e-mails
in which they claimed to have lost or almost lost jobs, relationships
and their good reputations when their computers were found to harbor
traces of pornography that they insist were placed on their computers
by a browser hijacker.
In one case a man claims that a browser hijacker sent him to jail
after compromising images of children were found on his work computer
by an employer, who then reported him to law enforcement authorities.
“The police raided my house on Sept. 17, 2002,” said “Jack,” who
came to the United States from the former Soviet Union as a political
refugee, and has requested that his name not be published. “Nobody
gave me a chance to explain. I was told by judge and prosecutor that I
will get years in prison if I go to trial. After negotiations through
my lawyer I got 180 days in an adult correctional facility. I was
imprisoned for 20 days and then released under the Electronic Home
Monitoring scheme. I now have a felony sex-criminal record, and the
court ordered me to register as a predatory sex offender for 10 years.”
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