Advertising. One of those necessary evils of the modern world - actually, it's been around, in one form or another, for a long while. But as far as I'm aware, never anywhere near so prolific as it is now.
There's advertising I'll put up with, because I know, somehow, that it's needed. I don't know the details, I don't care, and the chances are I'll ignore it.
But online, we seem to have a greater concentration of advertising companies willing to do "whatever it takes" to get hits for their clients. Maybe I'm wrong on this, and it's just because I'm far more used to the online world than the "outside" world, so online I spot stuff like this more. My job definitely helps - more on this later.
There are plenty of ways to fight back - many of them free, I should add - the main thing is raising awareness of the situation. The average PC user is likely entirely oblivious to the problem. The success of "rogue diallers" and so on proves this.
So let's start with a brief explanation of the methods. Even being brief, I'm afraid this may take awhile, and I certainly won't cover every possible method. I will be crossing over a bit into other territory - namely, the different forms of viruses (I mean, virii =+) - these days, the vast majority of diallers are considered virii by anti-virus programs. There are also some particularly nasty ad delivery programs that are considered virii, as they use some virus methods to spread themselves, etc.
Adware, broadly speaking, is any piece of software specifically designed to "deliver" adverts to a PC. Not to be confused with adaware, which is software that helps you to find and delete adware from your PC.
Adware can take many, many, many different forms. I'm going to include diallers for two reasons - firstly, they generally are distributed in the same style as adware and secondly, they are at least as big a problem, despite regularly making the news. Oh, and their effects, if successful, are worse than adware.
So then, diallers. What is a dialler? A dialler is a very small piece of software, often under 1MB. Currently, diallers only work if you have one of those "old skool" voice modems - a modem that uses the phone line. This doesn't include ISDN or ADSL modems, which work somewhat differently. Now, voice modems are effectively a telephone that is controlled by your PC. Diallers take full advantage of this - the idea is that they have settings for your voice modem, that make it dial a different number to your usual Internet provider's number. It probably seemed a good idea at the time - a good way to allow private bulletin boards to stay alive, for example. Of course, it wasn't long before the scamsters moved in. What you'll find these days, is that diallers point to premium-rate numbers. Ultra premium-rate numbers, often in some tiny European country you've never heard of until now. You find them being offered, usually, as services to allow you to download cracks, warez, music, games, and porn. Let's just assume for a minute that peer to peer networking doesn't exist, there's no such thing as BitTorrent et al, and you don't feel like learning how to use mIRC. Do you actually think using a dial-up connection to a premium rate number is going to be a more economic option for getting software than just going out and buying a legal copy? that's assuming any of these diallers really provide the service they claim. I have no idea how many actually do, if any, but if I had to guess I'd say that very close to 0% are for real.
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