Discussion on:

Malware targets search terms on top search engines

Somewhere on this planet there's always people for whom the need to sell is more than the need to stick to ethical standards of common decency and etiquette. Like wherever there sprouts an opportunity, there will always be a salesperson; a vulnerability on the internet will find a scammer.

The sad thing is, the easiest "marks" on the internet are the most greedy, unwashed and depraved individuals who are always drawn to free downloads, get rich quick schemes and smutty content; and it's usually the scammers' intent to target that degenerate minority.

So while this unscrupulous kind of marketing is generally beneath the vast majority of end users - or 'victims' if you like - it only requires one idiot in the gene pool to make the whole mass-production scamming spamming effort a profitable enterprise.

You can't blame the general media outlets but a technical media journalist should really know the difference even if the article they link too was written by someone who didn't. Stop with the boogiman sensationalism that is the modern abuse of the term "hacker".

You are too generous, Neon!

I'm an advanced IT user or moderately experienced IT pro, but I know that "hack" refers to applying the scientific method and engineering principles to computers, while "crack" and "cracking" refer to gaining illicit access, especially cracking access controls. A writer who doesn't know the difference, yet writes for publication in a tone suggesting that he knows what he's saying, should be called "a technical media paparazzo," not "a technical media journalist."